


Nature and Nurture

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst, Angst and Feels, But not cutesy de-aging, Distressing screams, Gen, In which Red Hood panics mildly, It was Jason of course, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Mention of canon drug use, Mention of loss of parents, Mild Blood, Rated for Profanity, There are hugs and kisses though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-05-01 11:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 54,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14519379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: It was a no good, very bad night all around, and it kept getting worse.In which the writer explores some classic tropes, indulges in some BatFam feels, and explores the effects of nature and nurture on the psyche of one Bruce Thomas Wayne.





	1. Chapter 1

It was a no good, very bad night all around, and it kept getting worse.

Red Hood wasn’t even supposed to be on patrol tonight. He was supposed to be holed up somewhere warm, coaxing the tail end of a cold out of his throat, not flitting over the rooftops of Gotham proper. And even if he were supposed to be out, he wasn’t supposed to be shepherding the birds around. And _even if_ he were saddled with the birds, there remained the cardinal rule: Hood was **never** to patrol with the Bat.

Yet here he was, chasing who knew what, who knew where, listening to the birds quietly cuss and pant in his earpiece while he fought almost back to back with the Bat to fend off a swarm of goons.

He hated it.

Thankfully, the Bat seemed to hate it just as much, because he was gone again in seconds, slamming his way out of the mosh toward the baby birds, leaving Hood to fend for himself.

Hood wanted nothing more than to get the heck out and head home. There was a damp fog creeping over the rooftops and down into the alleys—because of course there was—and the cold, wet air kept licking chills down his spine and arms.

Or maybe it was just the night. This no good, very bad night with its seemingly unending supply of battle-ready henchmen who kept boxing in their opponents but never going for the killing blow.

Not that they weren’t putting up a fight. Hood had the sweat-soaked underarmor to prove that they were. But it felt more like... a dance? Or a herding? There was a choreography to the waves of bodies and a direction that he couldn’t pinpoint. He didn’t like it, and Hood knew better than to ignore his instincts. 

It was time to bug out, let the Bat and the birds clean up their own mess. He’d be leaving them in a tight spot, but they’d gotten out of worse, and he didn’t want them getting any screwy ideas. An unspoken agreement to a semi-regular joint patrol was bad enough. At least that was as Hood, someone with a mutual interest in squashing the scum before they could rise too high. To go beyond that mutual interest would be to act as Jason, the former bird. The dead boy.

No, it was time to go.

Hood managed to uppercut a gap for himself in the onslaught and slipped away toward the edge of the roof. The birds were scattered across the skyline, hazy silhouettes in the fog. They were holding their own. They’d be fine. Hood hopped off the roof, catching himself on the railing of the fire escape and clambering past the level where the Bat was bludgeoning two men in succession with lightning-fast strikes.

Hood’s boots had just hit the ground with a thump when the night began to glow green. His head snapped up in time to see the ray of glowstick green pierce through the fog above and shoot past him. 

Muscle memory was a weird thing. Hood had spent months after his resurrection in a fugue state, conscious memory gone except for shadows and nightmares. Even once access to his memories returned, one could argue that his body had been transformed by the Lazarus Pit as much or even more than his mind had been. Red Hood was not the young street rat known as Jason Todd. He was not the spunky, wisecracking, masked support known as Robin. He was someone new. Different.

And yet muscle memory grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and forced him to his stomach before he could process the shift in the air. The ray could have been anything, but that unnatural green meant magic or aliens. Gotham was a city of criminals, of psychopaths and megalomaniacs, of blood. But it was always red blood. Human blood. That the Bat and his brood were prepared to deal with, but not magic. Not the extraterrestrial. And so, without the appropriate League member on hand, the protocol was clear.

Evade. Protect. Retreat. Quarantine.

Do not engage. Do not fight. Run.

As Robin, Jason’s role would have been to get as far away as possible and out of harm’s way while Batman shielded civilians. Unknown powers were terrifying. Unpredictable. And potentially unstoppable. Even now, Hood should be running away, scattering with the rest of the birds. Instead, he was up again, palms slapping against the pavement and then boots eating up yards with each stride as he sprinted the way he had come, the ghost of the Jason-who-was plucking at his tendons and making his muscles jerk and move to the beat of a call stronger than the Bat’s protocol.

He didn’t even know why until he reached the crumpled figure in the alley. Hood had counted the birds safe, his earpiece a riot of shouts, orders, and cries. He hadn’t noticed the missing voice, because he hadn’t recognized the scream that cut through the night, followed by the sickening thud of a heavy body hitting the concrete.

Hood hauled the armored figure to its feet and half-dragged the staggering Bat toward the alley’s mouth.

No, not the Bat.

_Bruce._

It hadn’t been the Bat’s roar that had split the night, not the rare but familiar bellow of an enraged or pained vigilante. It had been the higher cry of a man in fatal pain. Bruce had been the one hit, the one who fell from the fire escape and struggled to rise, the reason for four panicked voices that clamored in Hood’s ear now.

Bruce who fought Hood’s hold?

No time to figure that out.

Hood shoved Bruce onto the back of his waiting bike, then leapt on himself and punched the engine to life.

“I’ve got B,” he barked, cutting off another frantic, half-heard demand from Nightwing. “He’s hit. Quarantine protocol. Take the others and _go_.”

Hood snapped off his comm, knowing that whatever happened to the others now was out of his hands.

Bruce had the sense to grab Hood’s waist as the bike revved and shot forward into the night. Hood kept low and took the corners tight, the hot breath of danger danger danger at his heels. He had to get Bruce hidden and secured before whatever the beam did took effect. And he could only hope that whatever that power was didn’t include tracking.

Hood kept up a muttered litany of curses all the way to his nearest safe house, each word timed to the pounding beat of his heart. It was the danger that made his veins pulse, he told himself as he hefted Bruce off the back of the bike and hurried up inside the building. The unknown menace of a power that couldn’t be intimidated or beaten into submission. That was why he couldn’t catch his breath as he slammed his front door shut, why his hands trembled imperceptibly as he dumped the quietly groaning Bruce onto the bathroom floor.

His own helmet and gloves stayed on as a precaution against contagion, but Hood knelt on the tile and quickly undid Bruce’s cowl. The older man’s face was white, his hair plastered with sweat. Blue eyes roved fitfully through slitted eyelids before landing on Hood. Hood leaned forward despite himself, desperate for direction, only to jerk back when Bruce screamed again and convulsed, the throbbing veins on his forehead glowing green.

Hood scrambled backward on all fours, then turned and fled. He slammed the bathroom door, jammed a chair under the handle, then put as much room between himself and the bathroom as he could.

It wasn’t that he was scared. It was quarantine procedure, that was all. There was nothing he could do except wait and see how the effects manifested, and until he knew whether it was alien or magic, he had no way of even guessing whether those effects were transmittable.

He wasn’t scared. And Bruce’s screams didn’t bother him. Neither did the heavy silence that filled the safe house after the screams cut off. He was fine. And even if he were a little scared—which he wasn’t—it would only be because he couldn’t predict what would be on the other side of that door. 

So Hood waited with both guns drawn and cocked until the silence stretched and cooled and he was reasonably certain that an alien spawn wearing a Bruce-suit wasn’t going to bust through the door. He moved silently and cautiously, pausing at every sound as he set aside the chair. He was ready for anything. Either Bruce was in the thrall of some spell, under the influence of an alien power, or... His back felt cold even through his leather jacket, lacking the oppressive heat of Bruce’s body slumped against his spine.

With a low growl, Hood shouldered the door open and trained his gun on the spot where he had left Bruce’s convulsing body. 

He was ready for anything, except the sky blue eyes that stared up at him from beneath sweat-soaked curls. As Hood stood frozen, gun outstretched, a small fist reached up and pushed a tear off a reddened cheek while the other clutched the silky black cape around bare shoulders.

“Well, ffffffffff—”

It was a no good, very bad night. And it just kept getting worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “For the last time, I wasn’t gonna shoot you. Now would you come out from under there?”
> 
> Let the de-aging fun begin.

“For the last time, I wasn’t gonna shoot you. Now would you come out from under there?” Hood growled as he swiped his arm under the bed.

“No!” The cry came from deep in the shadows under his bed, too far back for him to reach and so high-pitched with enraged hysteria, it made Hood grimace.

“Listen, kid, I’ve had a really bad night, and the last thing I need right now is a half-naked preschooler under my bed.” Oh god, even saying the words made him want to jump out a window. HOW had his night gone so bad?

It was all Bruce’s fault. If Bruce had had a better handle on patrol, Nightwing wouldn’t have asked Hood to come along to help them track down the mysterious new operator in town. Then Hood wouldn’t have been nearby when Bruce had been hit with that weird green ray, and it wouldn’t have become his job to get Bruce locked down in quarantine, so he wouldn’t have been anywhere nearby when Bruce... when Bruce... Hood didn’t even know what. Disappeared? Shrank? Body-swapped? Lost four decades somehow? 

The kid had taken one look at Hood standing in the bathroom door with his gun—which Hood would argue was prudently drawn, given that there could have been an alien chest-burster sliming up his linoleum for all he knew—and had taken off like a rocket between Hood’s legs and out into the bedroom. Even with his little legs and the struggle of keeping his oversized clothes on, the kid had managed to avoid Hood and dove under the bed when reaching the front door seemed impossible. And, of course, given Hood’s recent string of luck, the bed in question was a mid-century behemoth that the previous tenants had obviously given up on ever moving, so he couldn’t move it away from the wall to reach the kid.

“I’m not in preschool!” The outraged reply jerked Hood back to the problem at hand. “I’m six years old, and you’re a bad man, a-and, a-and—”

Hood thought he heard some rustling under the bed, so he shoved his arm under the bed for another grab. Sharp, needlepoint teeth sank into his fingers through his gloves, making him yelp and yank back.

“Damn it, Bruce!” Hood yelled, smacking his hand against the mattress. 

He pushed himself off his knees and pulled his gloves off to inspect his fingers. No broken skin, but man did that kid have some jaw power. So lost in his own pique, Hood hadn’t noticed the heavy silence under the bed until a quiet voice broke it.

“How do you know my name?”

Under his helmet, Hood closed his eyes briefly. So it was Bruce. Despite the odds against Bruce being body-swapped with a random first-grader, he had still hoped... Go figure his bad luck wouldn’t let that happen.

“Because I know you, alright?” Hood sighed heavily. “I mean, the Bruce Wayne I know is a lot taller and a lot older and a real pain in the—Anyways, it’s a long story.”

Hood hesitated, then asked, “You don’t... know me? At all?”

Not necessarily a bad thing, given his past with Bruce. His present with Bruce. A tiny Bruce with his memories intact wouldn’t like him any better than a normal Bruce would. But if this kid didn’t know him, what was going through his mind right now?

“No!” Little Bruce’s voice was tight with anger but on the edge of wobbling and breaking. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know where I am, and I want to go home!”

Well, that was just... Hood looked down at the gloves in his hands, then around the room, seeing the situation from the kid’s perspective for the first time. 

He was, what had he said? Six? So he was this six-year-old kid who woke up alone in a strange place in clothes fifteen sizes too large. Then a masked, gloved man burst in, stuck a gun in his face, and chased him under a bed.

_Awesome. Way to go, Jay._

There were few people in this world Hood would be happier to stick it to than Bruce Wayne, but that only applied to an _adult_ Bruce Wayne. He wasn’t such a monster that he wanted to traumatize a little kid. And based on the quiet sobs coming from under the bed, he had done just that.

With another heavy sigh, Jason unlatched his helmet and set it on the bed with his gun and gloves before crossing the small room. With a quiet grunt, he sat down with his back against the far wall and rested his arms on his knees.

“Look. Bruce,” Jason said slowly. “I know you’re scared. But I promise I’m just as freaked out as you, and I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. Would you come out?”

“No! You’re a stranger, and I don’t talk to strangers.”

Okay, that was fair, he guessed.

“My name’s Jason.” Jason leaned sideways and craned his neck so he could look under the bed. Bruce was nothing more than a boy-shaped shadow in the far corner, but he gave the blob a little wave. “See? Not a stranger. You know my name.”

“That’s not how that works,” the shadow grumbled. Go figure even Baby Bruce would be hyper-rational and way too serious.

“Well, what do you want to know? So I’m not a stranger to you, I mean.” 

Jason felt like he was having an out-of-body experience. His own voice sounded so calm that it made him panic out that he wasn’t panicking more. He—the freaking Red Hood—was sitting on the floor in his apartment, talking to a de-aged freaking Batman who was hiding under his freaking bed. He—freaking Jason Todd, king of righteous grudge-holding—was having a civil conversation with freaking Bruce Wayne, who was six years old and also had no idea who Jason was. Actually, Bruce being civil because he didn’t know who Jason was was the most rational part of the entire scenario.

“You said you know me?” Bruce asked hesitantly. “When I was... taller? I don’t think I’ve ever been taller than this.”

“Yeah, that’s... complicated.” Jason rested his head against the wall and tried to think it through. “Basically, you were an adult, but now you’re a kid. So maybe it’s like reverse _Big_? Or that one movie with Jennifer Garner. But you don’t know me, and they still remembered everything, so maybe not. You got hit with that ray, so that has to be the cause, right? And it feels like more of a magic thing than an alien tech thing, because aliens are more about, like, mind control and weird diseases and stuff. I don’t know, it’s not like I’m an expert.”

Jason paused, realizing he’d probably just confused the kid even more. From under the bed came a wet little snort.

“Aliens aren’t _real_ ,” Bruce said, young voice dripping with amused derision. “Ev’rybody knows that.”

Jason had to choke down a snort of his own. “Sure, kid.”

He wondered if Bruce would keep arguing—he’d already proven to be just as cussedly stubborn as his grown self—but it seemed Bruce was also just as steadfastly curious and had returned to puzzling over his new situation.

“So I was an adult? That’s why my clothes are too big?”

“Yeah.” The layer of moisture-wicking underclothes the Bat wore under his armor was meant to be light and very fitted, but it was still yards too big for a little kid. Baby Bruce had barely been able to keep it on during his dash for freedom. Jason was glad he had. He didn’t need to see Bruce butt _ever_ , regardless of the situation. He had enough mental trauma without that, thanks.

“I don’t know if I’ll have anything that can fit any better, but I’ve got, like, safety pins and sh—stuff. I could try and pin your shorts,” Jason offered, tripping slightly over the effort to censor his speech. _He’d_ certainly heard a ton worse by Baby Bat’s age, but he still felt weird cussing in front of a little kid. He blamed Alfred.

“‘m not coming out,” Bruce grumbled. “If I come out, you’ll try to shoot me again.”

“I wasn’t gonna shoot you!” Jason protested. He clenched his teeth and growled. This conversation needed to stop before it whipped back around into the same worn groove as before. “I had it for protection in case the magic made you psycho instead of six, okay?”

“You had the thingy cocked! The, the safety!” Bruce retorted. The shadow wavered and looked suspiciously like it was shaking a scolding finger in Jason’s direction. “And your finger on the trigger! You don’t do that unless you’re about to shoot somethin’. That’s bad gun safety!”

“How in the—You’re six! What do you know?” Jason demanded. Surreal. This was absolutely surreal. Six years old and Bruce was _still_ on his case about the guns.

“Over 100 kids under the age of 15 are killed each year in gun accidents.” There was more rustling under the bed, and then Bruce spoke again, this time a little closer. “ _I’m_ under the age of 15. An accident jus’ means you don’t know what to do. So I wanted to know what to do.”

Of course he did. Because he’s Bruce freaking Wayne, the most extreme Boy Scout to ever live.

“Whatever. The point is, I’m not going to shoot you. I don’t hurt kids.” Except Tim, but Tim wasn’t a _kid_ , per se. And he did feel the tiniest bit bad about hurting the Replacement. Sort of. When he was really drunk.

Jason waited to see if Bruce would come out, but when no boy emerged from under the bed, he shrugged and pushed himself to his feet. “Fine. You can keep the boogeyman company under there. I’m making lunch.”

He was hoping that this gamble paid off. Despite being one at one point, Jason didn’t fully understand kids. He was hoping Bruce’s innate curiosity and probable hunger would lure him out from under the bed, but maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe the World’s Tiniest Vigilante would find a way to kick out a window and Jason would come back to an empty room. 

His luck couldn’t be that good.

Jason grumbled to himself as he stomped into the kitchen and rifled around the cabinet. Lunch could wait until he took care of his throat. The worst of his cold was over, but the drainage was still going strong, and the damp cold and stress of the night hadn’t made him feel shiny and new. He was also stalling calling the team. Not that he _wanted_ Baby Bat around longer than necessary, not a chance, but Nightwing was going to want a full, detailed report to give to the League, and just the thought of having his every choice dissected and analyzed made Jason weary to his bones.

He’d just put the kettle on when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

_Wow, I’m like a kid whisperer. Red Hood, Pied Piper._

Jason deliberately turned his back to the kid to adjust the heat on the burner. He’d heard from somewhere that kids were like cats. The more you ignored them, the more they wanted your attention. It’d worked with him and Alfred, anyways. 

His lips twitched at the memory of a younger Jason circling Alfred for days, studying the older man to gauge his trustworthiness. Alfred had done what Jason was doing now, deliberately ignoring the boy in favor of focusing on his tasks, allowing the other privacy to make up his own mind.

Jason waited until the shuffling of feet put Bruce deeper into the room before saying, “There’re clothespins in the drawer next to the pantry. You can use those on your clothes. Safer than safety pins.” 

He kept his eyes on the cupboard where he fetched cups and the necessary additions, but he could hear Bruce pause, then hesitantly change his path toward the pantry. Jason set out two cups, the sugar, lemon, and cream before returning to the stove with his container of loose leaf tea.

“You like darjeeling?” Jason asked as he spooned the leaves into the sifter and set the tea.

“That’s Alfred’s favorite tea.” Bruce’s voice piped up almost at Jason’s elbow. Thank goodness he wasn’t stealthy as a pipsqueak. Adult Bruce had certainly made Jason jump a time or two. Or five. Like butler, like son. Baby Bat made just enough noise to track, though, so Jason merely slanted a glance down at the boy.

“I know. He’s the one who turned me onto it.” Adult Bruce preferred spiced black tea. Jason and Alfred shared a suspicion that it had to do with the caffeine content.

Bruce’s fingers clung to the countertop as he stretched on tiptoe to see the kettle, and he gasped against his hands as he stared up at Jason. “You know Alf?”

“Yeah. Yeah, he’s a friend.” Jason swallowed the sudden lump in his throat at the thought of the elderly butler and turned away to hack out a cough. What would Alfred do when confronted with a tiny Bruce? However he reacted, he’d do a better job at taking care of the kid than Jason was doing. He’d done it once, after all. 

He needed to call Dick and get this kid home.

“Is there really a boogeyman under your bed?”

Jason cleared his throat again and turned back once he had his breath. “What? No. You were under there and didn’t see anything, right?”

Bruce’s brow was furrowed as he chewed on his thumbnail. “Yeah, but just ‘cause you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Jason didn’t know what to say to that, so instead he asked, “Need help with the pins?”

Bruce nodded, so Jason knelt to eye level and plucked the clothespins from the boy’s hand. Their eyes met, and Jason had to blink back the surreality that made his head swim. This was Bruce Wayne. He was pinning the waistband of Bruce Wayne’s shorts. He couldn’t decide which was weirder—the fact that Bruce was six or the fact that they were in the same room and not fighting. It was a tossup.

He had just finished clinching the not-so-pressure shorts in place when a small hand reached up and touched his white streak. Jason froze. Bruce didn’t _touch_ people. Bruce especially didn’t touch _him_.

“Are you old?” Bruce asked. “You have white hair. Like a grandpa.”

Jason snorted. “I’m nineteen.”

Bruce nodded, as if that were about what he expected.

“I’m not _old_ ,” Jason insisted as he stood. “You’re the old one, not me. Or you were. Speaking of, I gotta call... someone.” He jerked his chin toward the small table by the bedroom door. “Get my phone while I pour the tea.”

Bruce went where he was told, muttering as he did about manners and the necessity of saying “please,” but Jason ignored him. He could get used to bossing Bruce Wayne around.

Jason had just pulled the kettle from the stove and was turning to the cups when his window shattered. He watched in slow motion horror as a small grey cylinder bounced through the shattered glass and rolled across the room toward Bruce’s bare toes.

Time snapped back into place and rocketed forward, flashing like snapshots against Jason’s eyelids. 

The kettle bouncing and splashing against the kitchen floor.

His hands on the small kitchen table, launching him over.

The tea cups falling, shattering.

Bruce in the bedroom doorway, wide eyes latched onto Jason’s face.

“BRUCE, GET DOWN! GET DOWN!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is that an overly dramatic way to end a chapter? Yup. Am I bovvered? Nope.
> 
> Gotta admit, guys, my only other two fics have been more like linked mini-stories. It's a weird feeling to write actual, continuing chapters, so hopefully they hold up. More to come!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Bruce,” Jason hissed. “I need to know if you’re hurt.”_
> 
> _Bruce’s eyes watered, and Jason’s blood pressure spiked as he nodded._

Jason would never admit it out loud, but he owed Dick Grayson. When Bruce had given Jason the Robin mantle, Dick had been less than pleased. Though friendly to Jason, Dick had been pointedly hands-off in every area of Jason’s training, except one.

He had taught Jason how to fall. Again and again and again. How to fall, how to land, how to tuck, how to roll, until Dick was satisfied and Jason felt like he’d been lightly tenderized with a mallet. And Jason, a mulish teenager to his marrow, had then spent the next six months trying to learn every fancy circus move Nightwing used in the field in an attempt to outshine his predecessor. ~~Or impress him?~~ Up to and including the time Nightwing had sprinted to catch a child in the path of a runaway truck. Jason had practiced that stunt with one of the Cave’s mannequins for hours.

Then he’d been murdered by a clown the next year and had never gotten to use that particular skill. Until now.

The snapshots were still flashing, faster now, like a strobe light across reality.

Lunge. Snatch. Clutch. Tuck. Roll. FLASH. BANG. Heat. Kick. Slam. Up. Step. Stagger. Forward.

Now the Bat’s training took over once more. _Think. Assess. Act. Don’t react._

Jason shook his head, trying to dislodge the ringing in his ears. Flash. Bang. Heat. Ringing. He took another step and staggered to the side again. Dizziness. A flash grenade, then. Meant to stun, not kill. Which meant they were wanted alive. Which meant someone would be coming to collect them. They were probably already on the other side of the bedroom door, stomping through the broken glass.

_So much for tea._

Bruce clung to Jason’s front koala-style, arms and legs wrapped in a death grip. He was probably screaming. Jason couldn’t hear well enough to tell. He wrapped one arm around the boy’s head, then with the other arm snatched his gun from the bed and shot out the window. He was out the window, down the fire escape, and disappearing into the alley with Bruce in his arms by the time the bedroom door opened. 

\---

Three half-staggered, half-sprinted blocks, one stolen moped, two switchbacks to shake tails, and one inner meltdown over the phone still sitting on the table later, and Jason finally pulled the stolen bike into a narrow back street and ducked behind an overflowing dumpster. 

Panting with adrenaline and exertion, Jason slumped against the cold brick wall and dropped his gun on the asphalt next to him to try and unwrap the boy clinging to his torso.

“Kid?” 

As gently as he could, Jason peeled off the trembling child. Bruce’s face was a pink smear of tears, snot, and heat from being pressed into Jason’s ribs. And blood. Bruce’s chin, neck, and collar of his shirt were wet with blood. Jason’s already rapid heartbeat trebled.

“Kid?!” Jason pushed Bruce back at arm’s length and looked him over for bullet holes and broken bones. “Hey, tell me where the blood’s coming from. Where are you hurt? Bruce!”

Bruce’s mouth was moving, his voice shaky and almost inaudible as his small shoulders quaked. Jason was half a heartbeat away from losing his mind when Bruce pushed against his grip and bent over to put his head between his knees.

“Woah. Okay. Okay, breathe, buddy.” Jason’s hands fluttered uncertainly before landing feather-soft on the boy’s spine. “Just... in and out. It’s gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

The ringing in his own ears was finally subsiding enough that he could hear Bruce mumbling between gasps. Jason couldn’t make out everything, but it sounded like... a story?

 _”And then shoes went CLOMP, CLOMP. ‘Get outta my way you two big shoes! I’m not afraid of you.’”_ The words staggered out of Bruce’s lips, choppy and ragged, but forced steadily onward in recitation. Jason wondered if the kid needed to be checked for a head injury, but all he could do was listen to Bruce gasp his way through the story until the boy finally had his breathing back under control and straightened up.

“Bruce,” Jason hissed. “I need to know if you’re hurt.”

Bruce’s eyes watered, and Jason’s blood pressure spiked as he nodded. 

“I bit m-my tongue,” Bruce said with a sniffle, confirming the origin of the blood on his face.

Jason didn’t know whether to cuss or hug the kid. He settled for a strangled smile and a hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “We’ll get that looked at later, alright? Your breathing okay?”

Bruce nodded again. His face was still as pale as ice, but his chest did seem to be moving at a more regulated pace. “I h-had a panic ‘ttack.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that it took a moment for the words to register. Jason blinked. “Does... that happen a lot?”

“Sometimes I get really scared, an’ my chest hurts, an’ I can’t breathe,” Bruce explained, still in the same factual manner. “If I can try to remember something, that helps. I’m okay now.” He sniffled again, and his voice dipped as he confided, “That was really scary, though.”

 _Batman had anxiety?_ Jason was still having a hard enough time thinking of Bruce as a kid rather than someone who had popped out of the womb as a fully formed adult. Thinking of him as a _scared_ little kid was enough to make the world tilt. Or maybe that was just the after effects of the grenade.

“Yeah, I know, it was.” 

It was getting easier to keep his voice somewhat friendly. Jason had managed before, but only with a conscious effort not to growl at the kid who didn’t understand their history. That wouldn’t be fair. Not that Bruce had ever been concerned about being fair to Jason. Avenging his death would have been fair. Not replacing him while his body was still warm would have been _fair_. Bruce didn’t do fair. But that didn’t mean Jason couldn’t.

Shaking himself out of his moody reverie, Jason lifted the hem of Bruce’s shirt and did what he could to scrub the blood off. “We’re not out of the woods yet, kid. I’ve got to get in touch with some people who can get us off the streets and you home, but first I have to find a way to do that without those guys finding us. So you need to listen to me and do everything I say, understood?”

Bruce nodded his agreement, to Jason’s relief (and private glee—Batman, under his total supervision!) But before Jason could push himself to his feet, the little boy wrapped his koala arms around him again.

“Uh...” 

Was Bruce... hugging him? Jason couldn’t remember the last time Bruce Wayne had hugged him. Or anyone, for that matter. Maybe the day he’d been adopted? 

_Hey kid, here’s your congratulatory Adoption Day hug. Don’t forget it, because it’s the last one you’ll ever get._

And sure, this wasn’t _Bruce_ Bruce, but Jason had always assumed that the Wayne clan weren’t huggers in general. Maybe it was reserved for people under twelve?

Jason hesitated, then patted the boy on his back, like an awkward sitcom dad.

“Thank you,” came the muffled words, “for saving me.”

Bruce pulled his head off of Jason’s chest and looked up at him with a gleam of hero worship small children generally reserved for Superman. Or Batman.

“Uh,” Jason said again, eloquent in his stunned surprise. “Yeah. Sure, kid. Any time.”

With one last pat, he stood and gestured to Bruce to follow. “Now let’s get the others.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blargh, I feel like this is one of my rockier fics. Children. So tricky. Anyway, thanks to everyone for sticking with it. More to come!
> 
> Also, the book Bruce is quoting is this one (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/363973.The_Little_Old_Lady_Who_Was_Not_Afraid_of_Anything) as it felt thematically appropriate.
> 
> P.S. If you have any requests, you can drop them in the comments or via my Tumblr: https://lurkinglurkerwholurks.tumblr.com


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Jason didn’t trust Gotham, but it had been a long time since he had **feared** her._
> 
> _He feared her tonight. His senses were tightened to snapping, on the lookout for dangers magical and mundane. Jason made a point not to wonder how much of his fear had to do with the small hand that insisted on gripping his fingers._

Gotham had always been Jason’s home. His lungs filled with her smog and his heart beat with her screams. She was in many ways his father, mother, teacher, and foe. No one except the most depraved or the most foolish ever felt _safe_ in her embrace, and Jason was neither—but he more than most felt comfortable. As a street rat, as a Robin, and now as the vigilante Red Hood, Gotham’s alleyways and dark, shadowed corners were his to occupy and control. Like a trained tiger, he kept her at his side, but never turned his back. He didn’t trust Gotham, but it had been a long time since he had _feared_ her.

He feared her tonight. His senses were tightened to snapping, on the lookout for dangers magical and mundane. Jason made a point not to wonder how much of his fear had to do with the small hand that insisted on gripping his fingers.

Jason had shaken Bruce’s hold off the first few times. He needed to hold his gun, and dang it, even without his helmet (lord, he missed that helmet), he was the freaking Red Hood.

The Red Hood did not hold hands.

But Bruce—surprisingly clingy for someone who grew into a touch-phobe—kept reaching for Jason’s hand until it became easier just to let him have his way. Also, Jason told himself, at least this way he could keep his attention on their surroundings instead of monitoring Bruce. That’s what he told himself, and tried to ignore the warmth against his palm and the way every noise and flicker of movement in the night made his heart rate skyrocket.

Being responsible for someone else sucked.

They made agonizingly slow progress. It was deep night now and creeping toward morning. Even the villains were asleep, and the streets were empty. Barren. Which only made Jason and his young charge easier to spot and track, if anyone wanted to. So they clung to the shadows, hovering breathlessly in fog-filled niches and peering around corners with a paranoia that would make Harvey Dent seem trusting.

The roofs would have been faster, but Bruce was no Robin. He didn’t have the balance, the speed, or the training. He didn’t even have the sense to stop _talking_. Or maybe he was just so anxious that his nerves overrode his common sense.

“Do you get scared?” Bruce asked as he followed Jason down a side street.

“Hush,” Jason hissed.

“Do you, though?” Bruce made an effort to whisper, but his panting elevated the tone to a stage whisper at best.

Jason ground his teeth together, then forced himself to quit as he slowed down to ease around a corner. Bruce tried to peek out as well, but Jason shoved him back.

“What did I say?” He scowled down at Bruce, jaw tight. “You stay behind me until I say so.” Flying pigs, he sounded like Bruce. The other Bruce, that is.

Jason took another look down the road, then tugged on Bruce’s hand to follow. He let the chilly night air stretch around them, Bruce’s echoing steps muffled by the fog, then admitted, “Yeah. Sometimes.”

He glanced down at Bruce. “Everybody does, even if they don’t admit it.”

Bruce nodded, forehead wrinkled above his tiny nose, then sighed. It was such a deep, heavy sound for such a small person. “I’m scared of everything.”

 _Everything?_

That was a kid’s exaggeration, sure, but... Jason remembered the panic attack again, the way Bruce had a coping strategy ready, the way he recited an explanation as if he’d heard it from older lips a dozen times before.

They should not be talking. It was bad patrol protocol. Even worse running-for-our-lives-from-wizards protocol. But Jason was never one to ignore the itch of curiosity.

“Everything?”

“Well, a lotta things.” Another sigh, followed by a yawn. “I’m tired. I wanna go to bed.” 

“I know, kid.”

The plan was to get to the next closest safe house. Jason didn’t know how the goons found them at his last place, so he didn’t want to stick in one spot for too long. But if he could get to the safe house, he could get the supply pack he had stashed there, which included a burner phone. One call to Dick and they’d be back in business, or at least closer to flipping the lights back on. He just had to get himself and the kid there in one piece.

Jason had no sooner thought the words than a door swung open in front of him. He immediately stopped, tugged Bruce behind his back, and turned slightly so his thigh blocked sight of the gun in his hand. With the door blocking his view, Jason could hear the man on the other side before he saw him.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you. I’m going, okay? But I swear, lady, if you make me late for work—” The door swung shut, punctuating the grumbles of the speaker, a balding man in sanitation coveralls. He was on the shorter side—shorter than Jay by a good half a foot—but his shoulders were broad, and Jason knew you didn’t need height to do damage. The latest Robin was proof of that.

Jason squeezed Bruce’s hand, reminding the boy to keep still and quiet behind Jason’s back. He was hoping the man would be so distracted by his phone conversation that he would keep walking and not even notice them, but those hopes were shredded when the man turned and made eye contact with Jason. Jason’s shoulders tensed.

“Hey buddy, you Jay?”

 _What the—_

Jason cocked his head slightly, warningly. “Who’s askin’?” He did a fair imitation of the Bat’s gravely tone, but the full effect was lost without his helmet. ( _Lordy_ he missed that helmet.)

The man lifted the phone off his ear and waggled it slightly. “Some scary Greek chick wants to talk to you. Just called my phone and said she needed to talk to—” he cleared his throat, then recited, “—that piebald punk in the leather jacket spooking outside your door.”

 _Greek chick?_

Jason stared at the man blankly, then looked past him to where the crime watch surveillance camera eyed him steadily from atop the lightpole. He holstered his gun, then held up his hand. 

“Toss it here.”

“Two minutes,” the man warned. “I can’t be late for my shift. And I want that back.”

Jason waved him off, then brought the phone to his ear. “Oracle?”

“Hood!” Even with the heavy voice distortion, it was hard to miss Oracle’s relief or annoyance. “You ever hear of calling home? Where have you been?”

“Been a little busy, O. Did you seriously track me through the cams?”

“Since Elm, yeah. You’re not as sneaky as you think you are.” 

Jason tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder and scratched his nose, carefully flipping off the camera as he did so. Oracle either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because she never paused. 

“Took me this long to get someone to answer their phone. Who’s the kid, by the way? And where’s B? All the vitals in his suit flatlined.”

“It’s cool how you asked two questions that answered each other, O. Real talent you’ve got there.” 

Oracle groaned even as Bruce tugged on his hand and asked in a loud whisper, “Hey, who is that? Is that Alfred?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope,” Jason replied, popping his P the way Oracle especially hated. “Magic. Gotta love it. Speaking of which, we were already tracked to my safe house, so we really should be on the move. And I think your new buddy here is getting antsy.”

Coverall man was definitely taking multiple looks at his watch and looked as ready to move on as Jason felt.

“Take his phone with you. I’ll Venmo him.”

“You’ll—You gonna send it with a little bat and phone emoji? Sign it ‘From your neighborhood vigilante xoxo?’”

“Just give the man back his phone so he can see the balance.”

Jason lifted the phone from his ear and addressed the man. “My friend wants me to take your phone. She said she’s sending you money to cover it.” He mimed a tossing gesture, then threw the phone back to its owner.

The man scowled as he opened up his apps, but whatever Oracle sent him must have covered the phone and then some, because his eyebrows shot up in the direction of his receding hairline.

“Yeah, alright.” Coverall man chucked the phone back at Jay, then nocked him a jaunty two-fingered salute. “Whatever’s goin’ on, I don’t wanna know. I gotta get to work.”

Bruce popped his head around Jason’s leg and called, “It was nice to meet you!”

Jason hissed at him to be quiet, then said, “Come on, time to move again.”

As he pulled Bruce along, he lifted the phone to his ear again. “Alright, phone acquired, and we’re moving.”

“Putting Nightwing through,” Oracle confirmed, then the line clicked.

“Jay.” Jason would never admit how glad he was to hear his big brother’s voice, but that didn’t stop him from rolling his eyes at how relieved Nightwing sounded.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

“Okay, first, it’s not the 70s, stop that. Are you okay? Is B okay?”

“Oh sure, get pedantic on me first. I could be bleeding out for all you know.” Jason quickly sidestepped and whisked Bruce into an alley to avoid the flash of headlights down the road.

“Jay.” Spitty heck, Nightwing sounded more like the Bat the older he got.

“I’m fine. B’s fine, too. Sort of. He’s currently six? And it’s way past his bedtime. And I think we’re being tailed by some wizard’s freaking minions. And I lost my helmet. and my phone. O just Mr. Finch’d some poor guy into giving me his. But other than that, we’re good, it’s all good.”

“He’s...” Jason could hear Nightwing muttering something indistinct on the other end of the line, followed by a soft squeaking sound that usually happened when Nightwing pinched the bridge of his nose with his gloves and mask still on.

“Okay. Okay, that’s fine. Why am I even surprised anymore.” Nightwing sucked in a deep breath, then said, “I’ll reach out to Zatanna, see if she can help. If the meantime, I’m pretty sure B had her work up some magical wards to prevent tracking. He would’ve had one in his suit, but I’ll see if I can find the spares. Where should I meet you?”

Jason gave him the address of the next safe house, then added, “Better hurry up, ‘wing. I’ve already more than earned my pizza money in babysitting tonight, and I have a strict one flash grenade per evening limit.”

“I’m on it, Jay,” Nightwing promised. “And, uh, Jay?”

“Yeah?”

A cat yowled at them from a nearby trashcan, making Bruce flinch and stumble into Jason. Jason yanked the boy upright, then gave him a nod before hurrying them along again.

“Thanks. You know, for taking B and sticking with him.”

Nightwing sounded both so deeply grateful and uncomfortable that Jason frowned.

“Don’t be a douche, ‘wing. He’s six.” 

Jason cut the call and shoved the phone into his jacket pocket. At the next intersection, he stopped, then turned and squatted in front of a flagging Bruce.

“Look, I’ve got some... some people meeting us where we’re going, so I’d like to pick up the pace. If I put you on my back, can you hold on?”

At Bruce’s nod, Jason helped the boy climb up and wrap his arms around his neck. “I’m going to start running. Hold tight.”

It was the fastest way to move, Jason told himself as they charged through the night, as silent as ghosts. It had nothing to do with the way Bruce rubbed his eyes. Nothing to do with the feeling of the cheek against his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized when I was done writing this that I had accidentally created a lapse in logic resulting in a technical goof. Rather than fix it, I shall turn it into something that'll make everyone feel bad for Little Bruce in the next chapter. Mwaha.
> 
> Also, headcanon: Given Jason's close relationship and familiarity with the untrustworthy nature of Gotham, I wonder if he'd be much better suited to dealing with Two-Face than Bruce ever will be. I don't know Harvey well enough to write the thing, so someone please take this idea and run with it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saying Jason’s relationship with Bruce was a complicated one was like saying Harvey Dent was a bit conflicted. Jason blamed much of the strife on Bruce, but even he had to admit that some of the complications came from him. He didn’t trust Bruce, not fully, and never had.

Saying Jason’s relationship with Bruce was a complicated one was like saying Harvey Dent was a bit conflicted. Jason blamed much of the strife on Bruce, but even he had to admit that some of the complications came from him. He didn’t trust Bruce, not fully, and never had. Not Bruce as the too-good-to-be-true Good Samaritan plucking Jason off the streets. Not Bruce as the hard-nosed Batman with his strict set of moral codes that Jason didn’t fully understand. Not Bruce as the coward who let the clown live. Not Bruce as the traitor who roped in a black-haired, blue-eyed replacement to wear the Robin domino while Jason was still piecing his mind back together. Not Bruce who tried his best to make amends but also reserved a piece of his own trust from Jason. Bruce as the caring dad who _tried_ was the closest Jason had ever come in his life to trusting another person without reservation, but Felipe Garzonas, Sheila, and the clown had blown that to pieces.

But in all of those situations, Jason had been the ward, the son, or the adversary. He had never been the adult. Now whether or not he placed his trust in the sleepy six-year-old boy waiting in the hall was irrelevant, because he wasn’t the one who needed to trust, but instead the one who needed to be trusted. And it scared Jason spitless.

Especially since he had done nothing but fail to earn that trust from the beginning.

“You should have _told me_ ,” Jason hissed, guilt adding a bite to his tone as he repeated himself.

“I’m sorry.” Bruce had said that every time, too, and it only made Jason feel worse, because it wasn’t the kid’s fault.

_I don’t want to adult anymore. I’m done. I want to go bed._

Jason sighed and rubbed the back of his hand against his gritty eyes. “It’s not your fault. I’m just... I made a dumb mistake, okay?” He nudged the boy’s ankle with his knuckle. “We’ll get this fixed at home. I can’t do it here.”

Bruce nodded, his solemn little face lit from below by the penlight he held clutched to his chest. “Alfred will fix it.”

Alfred would take a piece out of Jason’s hide for being so stupid. Jason sighed and rose out of his squat. With careful, silent steps, he slipped through the dark room toward the window to keep an eye out for Dick, but before he could get more than a few feet, Bruce squeaked, “Where are you going?”

Jason paused and pivoted toward Bruce only to immediately stagger back when he was hit square in the eyes by the penlight’s beam. Though not a strong light, it still hurt in contrast with the unlit safe house. 

“Geeeeeeeeeeeez,” he gasped as Bruce quickly aimed the light at Jason’s knees.

“Sorry.” A tiny pause and then, “Don’t leave.”

“I’m just...” Jason whispered, jerking his thumb toward the window, but his words trailed off as he looked down at the shadowed little boy.

Jason had left Bruce out in the hall while he had checked his backup safe house for any waiting goons. His paranoia insisted on leaving all the lights off, so only a mixture of threats, cajoling, and possession of the penlight had coaxed the little boy into the lightless apartment.

_“I’m scared of everything.”_ The odds were low that dark, unfamiliar places _didn’t_ top the fears list of a first-grader, and Jason’s luck all night had been crap.

And now he was expecting a tired, terrified, in pain little boy to sit in the dark while he skulked by the window. A mini-Bruce could have handled it, but the more Jason interacted with this Bruce, the more he realized that the kid was nothing like the man he grew up to be.

With a low grumble, Jason abandoned his path to the window and returned to the futon. As soon as he sat down, Bruce scrambled across the cushion and climbed up into his lap.

“What are you—?!” Jason sputtered. He lifted his arms and tried to arch away from the child dripping down his front.

Bruce ignored Jason’s alarmed contortions and settled in his lap, a small, bony shoulder digging into Jason’s ribcage. The little boy sighed softly as he rested his head against Jason’s heart and then curled his legs so his feet rested on Jason’s knees. And that’s how they sat, a horrified tableau in the dark, until Jason finally relaxed his arms and lowered them to the cushion.

“So, uh, you doing okay? With your anxiety and sh—stuff?” Jason asked after a long pause.

He could feel the boy nod against his chest. “I’m still scared, but it’s okay.”

“Because you’re always scared,” Jason finished with a sigh. Another nod. “Well, there’s no need to be. I’ve got you. And this is my neighborhood, my turf, so nothing bad is going to happen, capisce?”

Bruce seemed to perk up a bit at that. “You know Italian?”

“Do I—No, you nerd. Isn’t it past your bedtime?” It had to be. It was... what, three, four in the morning?

The only answer Jason received was a yawn and a small shrug. Jason shifted his weight slightly, redistributing Bruce’s bony butt so he didn’t feel like he was being stabbed in the thigh. He opened his mouth to say that it was safe to sleep when he heard the susurration of the fire escape window opening.

Jason snatched the penlight out of Bruce’s hand and clicked it off as his forearm wrapped around the boy’s head and muffled his mouth. At the same time, he had his gun in his free hand and pointed toward the far window at the silhouetted figure that was pulling itself through.

The world narrowed into focus, as it always did when Jason wielded his gun. He could hear the rasp of Bruce’s panicked breathing. Feel the single bead of sweat trickle down his back. Count the seconds march forward with the heavy, steady pace of a giant’s boots. Jason lifted his thumb, cocked the safety with a soft _click_ , and—

“Jay?” came the stage-whisper from the window.

“‘Wing?” _Oh thank god. An adult._ Jason lowered his gun.

“I’ve got the car in the alley. Can you make it down?”

“The wards?” Jason hissed.

“Catch.”

Catch? It was blacker than Selina’s— Jason grunted as two leather-hung charms smacked him in the face. Jerk. With some awkward fumbling, he managed to get one necklace over Bruce’s head and the other around his own neck.

“Ready?” Nightwing asked from the window.

Jason nodded, even though Nightwing wouldn’t be able to see, and bent his head to whisper in Bruce’s ear. “Arms around my neck. Time to go.”

Bruce did as he was told, and Jason rose to his feet with one arm around Bruce’s back. They crossed the small apartment and reached the window where Nightwing waited. Together, they vaulted down the fire escape and over to the idling Batmobile. Jason didn’t breathe until he had slid into the passenger seat, Bruce still clinging to his chest, and Dick threw the car into gear.

“You sure these wards will work?” Jason asked.

“You think B would keep them around if there was a chance they wouldn’t?” Nightwing retorted.

“I hate magic,” Jason muttered.

“Yeah, well, join the club.” Nightwing glanced their way as he threaded the car through Gotham’s narrow streets. “But you’re both okay?”

“Define _okay._ ”

“Jason.”

“Dick.”

“That’s a bad word.”

Jason rolled his eyes skyward at the pint-sized interruption. Nightwing punched a button on the dash, then turned to face his family as the car settled into autopilot.

“Hey, B. You okay?” Nightwing cocked his head and studied the little boy who had his face buried tightly in Jason’s shirt.

Jason cleared his throat, then tapped Bruce’s back. “Hey, kid. We’re safe now. You can let go.”

Slowly, Bruce loosened his grip and pulled back to eye Nightwing. Jason swallowed a snort at the heavy skepticism in the boy’s face. There’s the Bruce he knew.

“Bruce?” Nightwing prompted.

“He doesn’t remember you,” Jason interrupted. “Or me.”

“So actually young instead of just shrunk,” Nightwing said slowly. His eyes flicked over both of his brothers, taking in the way Bruce clung to Jason. “You two seem to be getting along well.”

Jason growled. “This has been the longest night of my life. Don’t screw with me, Dick.”

Dick extended a gloved hand, which Bruce eyed for a moment then cautiously shook. “Dick Grayson. We meet when you’re older.”

“Taller,” Bruce said, echoing his earlier conversation with Jason. He let go of Dick’s hand and grabbed a fistful of Jason’s shirt like a baby monkey clinging to its mother’s fur. He squinted up at Dick, ignoring Jason’s squawking, and asked, “Why’re you wearing a mask?”

“Oh, this?” Dick tapped his face. “It’s a long story.” 

Jason tracked as Dick mentally flipped through and then discarded several explanations in quick succession. As a family, none of them had much experience with little kids, but Dick was the best at it by far. “The short version is I fight crime and help the cops sometimes.”

Jason was relieved when Bruce seemed to accept that answer without a deluge of follow-up questions, but then Bruce twisted sideways in Jason’s lap and Dick caught sight of his feet.

Bruce’s feet were a mess of cuts and filth. One foot still had an oversized black sock puddled around its ankle, the soft fabric now a shredded heap. The other was bare, leaving the stained and blooded skin of full display. When Jason had first seen the damage, he had cussed a streak that would keep Alfred in pocket money for weeks. Dick, at least, managed to watch his mouth, but the look he shot Jason was pure murder.

Jason could feel a slow flush climbing up his neck. “The boots were too big. There were guys. They raided my safe house, and we had to run.”

“Across what, an abandoned glass factory?” Dick asked, incredulous, as he snagged Bruce’s foot and lifted it up for inspection, only to drop it again when Bruce whimpered.

_No, just half of Gotham. The poor half._ “I screwed up, I know, okay?”

“Alfred’s going to have a fit,” Dick grumbled.

Bruce let his head against Jason’s collarbone with a quiet thunk. “I want Alfred,” he whined. It seemed the stress of the day and the late hour were finally catching up.

Jason grimaced and opened his mouth to say something—he hadn’t thought of exactly what yet—when Bruce let out a small sob. “I want my mom.”

Gotham froze. The children asleep in their beds and the villains in their lairs and the crackheads in their dens and the bodies still and cold in their graves—it felt like all turned their attention to this little boy. The Batmobile was utterly silent except for the nearly low rumble of the engines, the tears from the child, and the stuttered thrum of Jason’s pulse. Over Bruce’s head, Jason made wide-eyed contact with Dick, who look just as stunned and suddenly terrified as Jason felt. How stupid were they to not think of this before?

For a moment, Jason clung wildly to hope. Maybe Bruce meant in a theoretical sense, the way on Jason’s worst of the worst days he still wished for Catherine to appear and bundle him close. Bruce had only mentioned Alfred all night, not his parents, so maybe he knew... maybe he remembered...

_How old is he?_ Dick mouthed.

_Six._ Jason mouthed back. The churning nausea in his stomach rose as Dick closed his eyes, pain pulling his lips together tightly. Then Jason felt himself do the same as the timeline finally clicked into place. Bruce Wayne was six years old, still two years away from a life-shattering dark night in a deadly alley.

He thought his parents were still alive. He was just a little kid, and he thought his parents were waiting for him at home.

* * *

It had taken frantic, mouthed conferring over Bruce’s head and a patchwork of smooth talking (Dick) and half-truths (Jason) to get the boy to stop crying, but eventually they managed to convince him that his parents were out of town and Alfred was watching the Manor. Bruce, being Bruce, had asked far too many pointed questions even through his hiccuping sniffles. Still, there was only so much a little boy could handle at four in the morning, and Jason soon found himself with an armful of sleeping first grader.

Jason had held kids before, of course. He snatched them from burning buildings, plucked them out of the grasp of villains, wrenched them from the paths of runaway cars, and delivered them into the arms of frantic adults. The kids in his turf knew Red Hood. They knew his code and trusted him to keep them safe. But they feared him, like everyone else. They didn’t curl into him like a kitten seeking warmth. They didn’t wrap their little arms around his waist and clutch fistfuls of his shirt. They didn’t bury their faces in his chest and leave them there to warm him with their soft, hiccuping breaths. They didn’t fall asleep, limbs limp and loose, as if his arms were the safest place they could possibly be.

“This is the weirdest friggin’ night of my life, Dickie,” Jason breathed, too emotionally winded to even cuss.

“Yeah... yeah, I can imagine,” Dick agreed slowly. They both spoke in whispers, afraid to wake Bruce again before they reached the Cave. “So he really doesn’t remember being... being our Bruce?”

Jason shook his head, one quick jerk of his chin. “You think he’d be sleeping on top of me if he did?”

Dick smiled, the lines of his mouth soft instead of mocking in the flickering glow of the passing streetlights. “I don’t know what’s weirder—seeing Bruce as an actual kid, or finding out he was a cuddlebug.”

“I dare you to call him that once he’s back to normal,” Jason replied immediately. They both shared a smile then, distracted by the imagined reaction of a dour Adult Bruce. Baby Bruce whuffled softly in his sleep, and Jason’s hand rose of its own accord to rub his back. When he realized what he was doing, Jason quickly dropped his hand again, but then sighed.

“What’re we going to do?” Even to his own ears, he sounded tired, lost, and young, younger by far than he had felt in a lifetime. “He thinks his parents are alive.”

“I know.” Dick pinched the bridge of his nose, an affectation he had picked up from Bruce. It made him look older and, inexplicably, made Jason feel sad.

“We can’t tell him.” Jason imagined telling this six-year-old kid that his parents had died decades ago, would die within two years. His arms tightened around Bruce, making the boy sigh and bury his face deeper into Jason’s chest.

“I don’t want to tell him, but how can we hide it?” Dick countered. Jason opened his mouth to argue, but Dick cut him off. “You’ve seen that house, Jay. You think he’s not going to notice? Maybe he’s only six, but he’s still Bruce. And he’s going to notice when they don’t come back.”

“You know I’m always on board for screwing over Bruce Wayne,” Jason said, talking over Dick’s derisive snort, “but we can’t... He’s not Bruce, not yet. He’s just a kid.”

Dick sighed again and returned his attention to the road, letting a shroud of silence fall over the Batmobile. They were almost to the Cave, where questions and decisions waited, and Jason fought not to shrink into his seat. He could remember, hazily, on the edges of his memory, when the Cave had meant safety. It had meant respite after a productive night, learning how to use his body and mind as one, and having a place where he mattered. Now all it meant was disappointment, judgement, tension, and, apparently, breaking a kid’s heart.

Well, Bruce’s wouldn’t be the first.

But when Dick spoke again, all he said was, “We’ll figure it out. Somehow. All of it.” He looked over at Jason and Bruce, gaze distant and soft behind his mask. “We’ll fix this.”

“I hope so, Dickie.” Jason rested his head against his seat and closed his eyes. “I hope so.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby Bruce Wayne was a cuddlebug, pass it on.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dick Grayson considered himself a flexible individual, both physically and mentally. Roll with the punches, that was his motto. But even the most flexible of materials could only stretch so far, and it had been a very long night for one Richard John Grayson._

Dick Grayson considered himself a flexible individual, both physically and mentally. Roll with the punches, that was his motto. But even the most flexible of materials could only stretch so far, and it had been a very long night for one Richard John Grayson.

Patrol had been weird, a strange, jittery feeling in the air that had left Dick’s nerves jangling. Bruce must have felt it, too. Why else would he call in Hood? The two vigilantes—both broken, but one stoic and impenetrable and the other deliberately vulgar and ostentatiously violent—posed more danger when forced together than half the rogues in Gotham. But Bruce, through Dick, had called and Jason had come, if with great reluctance and complaining. The struggle of acting as oblivious peacemaker, of keeping the two of them as far apart as possible while playing dumb, never got any easier, not in masks or out of them. Sometimes Dick wondered if they noticed the way they stretched him, making him strain and contort to bridge the two offending halves of his heart. And if they noticed, did they care?

It had been an exhausting patrol. Tim and Damian snarled and sniped. Bruce and Jason traded barbs and passive-aggressive silences. The fog had trailed its chill, damp fingers down Dick’s spine and brushed them across his vision like clinging spiderwebs. Dick wanted to go home. He wanted the Manor to _be_ home, a peaceful refuge instead of a fractious mess of broken people who only sometimes liked each other. He was tired of the bickering, of playing mediator, of listening to Jason suck and snort nasal drainage back into his throat in protest of being part of the patrol. Of course, just when Dick had been ready to turn to Bruce and call it quits, the night had split at the seams and spewed an unending mass of henchmen into their path.

At first, the fighting had been a relief. There was no breath to be spared for sniping when ducking a punch. The appearance of an outside enemy coalesced the masks into a single unit, focused on beating back the oncoming tide. But the onslaught hadn’t stopped. Crumpled, unconscious bodies were merely replaced with more, each disguised and indistinguishable from the next. The indivisible unit of current and former Robins had spread further and further apart. Dick noticed but could do nothing about it except stay close to Damian and hope the others were guarding each other.

Then the scream had ripped the cold night air in two. Dick’s heart stopped, an expression he didn’t use lightly in a family like his.

 _Bruce._

As the eldest, Dick had the dubious privilege of being the only Robin who had fought alongside Batman before Bruce had decided—rightly or wrongly—what his children could not handle. This was not the first time Dick had heard Bruce scream in pain. That didn’t make it any easier.

“Batman, report!” No answer. “Batman, status report! Does anyone have eyes on Batman?” 

Panic tugged Dick’s voice upward, and he forced it ruthlessly down into a Bat-appropriate pitch as he sprinted back in the direction he had last seen Bruce. The shouts and cries of the others behind him were as obscuring as the neon-lit fog. Dick should have noted the unearthly color, should have slowed, but he didn’t. Bruce needed him.

Except Hood was there. Dick was too far from the alley still to see him, but he could hear the grunts and the gravely, barked order in his earpiece. “I’ve got B. He’s hit. Quarantine protocol. Take the others and _go_.”

Quarantine protocol. Aliens or magic or some exotic and deadly disease. He needed to fall back, get the others to safety. Evade, protect, retreat. But Dick hesitated, balancing on the tips of his toes as his body strained forward and his training pulled him back.

_Bruce._

Did he trust Jason to protect Bruce? To shepherd him through whatever danger gripped them both? Or would Hood take advantage of Bruce’s weakness and put a cap in the Bat’s head the moment they were away?

Behind him, the others shouted his name, voices receding as they fought their way free of the mass of bodies and toward freedom. Ahead and below, the alley echoed with the roar of Hood’s motorcycle. Dick stood poised for a moment more, then turned on heel and fled, following his siblings to the Batmobile and safety.

The rest of the night, frankly, had sucked. No one in Bruce Wayne’s life was well-equipped to handle inaction, especially when the man himself wasn’t around. Tim had shrugged off palliative care for his broken nose, choosing instead to hunch over the Batcomputer. Dick could only imagine he was researching eerie green glows, seeking further information from Kon, trying to track down Bruce and Jason, or all three at once. 

Damian had been a holy terror, railing against Dick for letting Jason take Bruce. (“Todd is a lunatic! He’ll slaughter Father as soon as look at him. I will hunt him down and gut him through myself if he dares!”) It had taken Dick uncharacteristically raising his voice—which he hated doing, especially to a kid used to being ruled by fear—before Damian had subsided into a scowling pout and replaced his body weight’s worth of weapons into various hiding spots around the Cave. Dick made a mental note to clear out those caches later.

Cass had been the worst, not because she had been trying to be difficult, but the exact opposite. She saw too much. Knew too much. She knew exactly how worried Dick was, no matter how well he hid it from the others, and nothing he could say would be able to take that knowledge from her. She brooded up in the rafters of the Cave, acting more like the child of Bruce Wayne than the rest of them put together in that moment. Dick could only look up her way as he paced through the Cave, sparing her a small, tender smile as he gave Oracle the details of what he knew. Babs had promised to throw her full technological weight behind finding the missing duo, and then had hung up.

Dick had stared at the phone in his hand, at a loss. The others weren’t the only ones who needed a task. He wanted to be out there with Bruce, with Jason, on the hunt for whoever had come into their city and attacked them. But he was stuck here, babysitting.

Dick’s gaze drifted to the computer where Tim worked. Dick had deliberately blocked access to the Bat suit’s biorhythms. Until Babs located him, knowing what state Bruce was in without being able to help would only exacerbate the general Cave mood. Dick’s eyes moved from the computer itself to Tim’s hunched shoulders, then up to the still black blot of Cass, then down to the training mat where Damian wore himself ragged with exercise after exercise.

Well, fine. If he had to babysit, then he would babysit. And that was how, after a battle of wills that would have left Superman exhausted, Dick managed to corral his siblings into a corner of the Cave, all still in full combat gear, and barricaded them into a haphazard pillow fort. They were making steady progress through Dick’s read-aloud of the first Harry Potter novel when Babs called.

She had found them.

Dick had shut the book mid-sentence, passed it to Tim, and climbed out of their fortress, phone pressed to his ear.

“They’re okay?” he demanded, voice pitched low, mindful of inquisitive ears.

“They’re alive,” Babs confirmed, sidestepping his actual question but answering the underlying fear. “They might have someone on their tail. Hood says it’s definitely magic. I’ll let him explain.”

The line clicked, and there was Jason, alive and as smackably sarcastic as ever. Dick was thrilled. He was less thrilled to learn that Bruce currently had all his baby teeth. 

Sure. Why not. Bruce being turned into a Sesame Street fan seemed like a perfectly sane thing to have happen on a Tuesday night in Gotham.

For just a moment, Dick had paused in his search for Zatanna’s spare wards and allowed himself to marvel at the idea of Jason Todd playing nursemaid. As far as he knew, Jason didn’t even like kids. He definitely didn’t like Bruce.

Now, deeper into the night, Dick was still marveling. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the boy—at Bruce—until the three of them had left Jason’s dingy little bolthole and were safely back in the Batmobile. It was a surreal, reality-bending feeling half a step off deja vu to look into wide blue eyes so familiar yet so foreign. If he squinted and studied, Dick could see the Bruce he knew. More than that, though, he saw the boy from the faded, carefully dusted frames that lined the Manor halls. It was like being next to a ghost, or a character from a movie.

Even before Jason confirmed that Bruce had no memory past age six, Dick could tell. The eyes weren’t right. Even at his Bruciest, Bruce could never look that innocent and frightened. He was an even cuter kid in person. Big blue eyes, soft curls, full cheeks, little button nose. There was none of the hardness or reserve, none of the suspicion or grief that Dick was used to seeing in Adult Bruce’s face. He was so used to them, in fact, that Dick hadn’t realized they were there until he looked into a younger version of the same face that had been wiped clean. Unsurprisingly, Bruce reminded Dick of Damian, but being able to see the patriarchal Wayne as a child only highlighted the hardness that Damian still carried. It made Dick sad in a way he hadn’t expected.

Dick would have sworn that a deaged Bruce would be the weirdest part of the night, but that was before he had seen how Baby Bruce and Jason were together. Bruce _clung_ to Jason. He had clearly decided that of all the dangers present in the night, Jason was his one point of safety. The names “Bruce Wayne” and “Jason Todd” weren’t usually connected by those kinds of words. But Bruce had held tightly to Jason even as he cried himself to sleep. When they had reached the Cave and Dick had come around to take the sleeping boy from Jason, Bruce had bolted awake with a wild scream that had made both men jump.

“Shh, shh, shh.” Jason nudged Dick away with his foot before pulling Bruce close and standing with a grunt. “You’re fine. I gotcha.”

Bruce had his fingers curled in the loose fabric of Jason’s shirt and in the collar of his jacket. Standing behind them, Dick’s fingers flexed, triggered by phantom muscle memory. If he took a breath, he could feel Damian’s weight in his arms, the boy’s sleepy fingers clinging to his shirt. If he exhaled slowly, he could remember being little himself, his own arms wrapped around his father’s neck, a heartbeat in his ear. He knew what it felt like to be the child, to be the adult. But when had Jason gotten old enough to be the one holding instead of being held?

The Cave was quiet and empty. Dick, thinking ahead, had called the Manor and had the others put to bed. Meeting them in his exhausted state would likely have pushed Bruce over the edge again. Dick was glad of that decision after Bruce’s reaction a moment before. Bruce had never been keen on strangers, and he doubted little Bruce was any different.

Dick watched the pair as Jason carried Bruce to the medical cot. He was too far to hear what they were saying, but Jason’s dry, throaty gravel kept up a steady patter, eliciting nods and even a small smile from a sniffling Bruce. Jason grabbed the first aid kit from beneath the cot, while Dick ducked into the back to change out of his uniform.

When he reemerged, towel scrubbing washed hair and feet silent in thick gym socks, Dick paused. Jason was methodically working on Bruce’s feet. A bowl of warm water sat on the floor next to an open bag of Epsom salts for softening skin. The surface rippled as Jason tossed a sliver of glass into the water without looking, his full attention on Bruce.

“You’re doing good. Doin’ good, B. I’m almost done.” 

For the first time since he had come back to Gotham, Jason almost sounded young again. The rough grit still lingered in his voice, a texture that Dick was never sure whether to assign to the Pit or to the cigarettes that Jason kept in his jacket pocket. Despite that, the tight guardedness that seemed as intrinsically a part of Jason as his white forelock was gone. His voice was soft, gentle even. His touch was deft and sure.

_He’ll make a great dad someday._

The thought was enough to make Dick blink. As he wrestled with the shock, he looked up and past the quiet duo to the house stairs, where Alfred stood, a queer twist to his normally unalterable mouth.

At Dick’s subtle movement, Alfred’s gaze swung from the cozy tableau to his eldest charge. There was a beat, a moment of charged silence. Then Alfred straightened his already impeccable posture and descended the stairs.

“When you have finished there, Master Jason, I have taken the liberty of gathering sleepwear for you both.”

Bruce’s head snapped up, the scrunched expression on his face pulled smooth.

“Alfred!” he cried, voice ringing with joy and relief. Dick half expected him to leap off the table and charge the butler. Jason must have as well, since his hand flew to Bruce’s small shoulder and braced him. But Bruce merely beamed from ear to ear, body quivering but stationary.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred greeted. He crossed the last of the distance to the cot and placed a stack of folded clothes next to Bruce. Then he lifted his hand and rested it gently on the shoulder that Jason had just vacated. “I hear you have had an adventure tonight.”

Bruce nodded. His bottom lip trembled, and again Dick braced himself, but after a few ragged breaths, Bruce seemed to steer himself clear of trouble. 

“I hid under a bed,” Bruce announced. “A man blew up a window, and it was loud, and then we _jumped out a window_ and walked for a really long time. And I didn’t get any tea.”

“That does sound like a full evening,” Alfred agreed. He patted Bruce’s shoulder once, then removed his hand. “It is good to have you home, young sir.”

Bruce sighed, a quiet, huffing gust of air that released of the night’s exhaustion and upset at once. “I want my mom.”

Thankfully, Alfred had been prepared already. “As was explained, your parents are not available, Master Bruce. But I have prepared a room for you upstairs, and we shall soon put all to right.”

“Okay, Alf.”

Dick padded up silently behind Alfred and clapped a hand to the butler’s shoulder. “You must be pretty exhausted, huh, B? Bed sounds pretty good right about now, I’ll bet.”

That spark of wariness flickered in Bruce’s eyes as he regarded Dick, but he nodded. “Yuh.”

Jason deftly tucked the end of the bandage he had been wrapping around Bruce’s feet and pulled the socks Alfred had brought up to encase the whole mess.

“All done,” he declared. The stiffness had returned to Jason’s shoulders, and when he stood, he pivoted to keep both Dick and Alfred in sight and out of reach. “Time for bed.”

Bruce nodded again and held out his arms, silently asking to be held. Dick’s chin jerked slightly in surprise to see those little arms held out to Jason instead of Alfred. The butler seemed unperturbed, but Jason frowned.

“You don’t want Alfred?” he asked, jerking his thumb to the side as if Bruce had forgotten who the mustachioed gentleman was.

Bruce rubbed his fist against one eye sleepily, but the other eye gave Jason a quizzical look. “Alfred is the butler, not the nanny.” 

The words came easily, crisply, and pitched in a way that made it sound… like he was quoting someone, Dick realized slowly. His parents? Alfred himself?

“And I am?” Jason meant it as a joke, but an unhappy pink tinge flooded Bruce’s cheeks, and he dropped his arms.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Before Bruce could scoot off the edge of the cot and drop to the floor, Jason snagged the little boy under his arms and hefted him onto a hip.

“Oh whatever,” he huffed, but without any heat to his voice. “I’ve been carrying your behind all night. What’s a little longer.”

They climbed the stairs together, an oddly matched little group bound in silence. When they stepped through the door into the Manor proper, Dick watched the mood shift over the pair in front. The Manor had changed very little in its lifetime. The den as it was now was very similar to the den of Jason’s childhood, and of Dick’s, and, Dick suspected, of Bruce’s.

As far as Dick could remember, Jason had only stepped into the Manor once, maybe twice, since his return to Gotham. Instead of easing into the embrace of the familiar, his spine stiffened and his shoulders threw back, as if bracing himself for a punch. When Dick looked around, he saw Bruce sitting at his desk, checking homework with his reading glasses pushed to the end of his nose. He saw card games on the hearth by the fire. He saw bedtime stories in the big wingback chair. He wondered what Jason saw.

Even in the dark, Bruce recognized where he was, and his body relaxed, his grip on Jason’s collar loosening as he looked around in surprise.

“This is my house!” He swiveled his head to stare at Jason, his pink lips a perfect _o_. “How did we get to my house?”

Sharp blue eyes turned back the way they had come, eyeing the stately grandfather clock, then returned to Jason, sleep forgotten for the moment. “Were we in Narnia?”

Dick laughed and even Alfred’s mouth twitched in amusement. Jason, still tense, seemed less amused, but he gave himself a small shake and answered, “Nah. Bat Cave. It’s… it’s a long story.”

“Alfred,” Bruce said, squirming in Jason’s arms to look over his shoulder at Alfred. “Are there bats in my house?”

Dick frowned. He didn’t think he was imagining the flare of fear in Bruce’s wide eyes. They were just bats, not Freddy Kruger, and they weren’t even in the house. He looked to Alfred as they walked, hoping for an explanation, but Jason spoke first.

“Bats are part of everything, huh?” he asked. Whatever that meant. Bruce nodded, which made Jason nod in turn. “All good, kid. No bats allowed upstairs.”

Dick stifled a snort but let the double meaning slide unremarked.

The next problem came when they reached the top of the stairs.

“My room is that way,” Bruce said, pointing down the hall. He was right. His room was that way. His now very adult room with its photos and books and not a single toy or whatever else little Bruce would expect to see.

“Why don’t you take him to your room, Jay?” Dick said quickly, then winced. It was the wrong move. He knew it even before Jason leveled a death glare his way and Bruce twisted in surprise to stare at Jason for the second time.

“ _You_ have a room?” Bruce asked. “Here? In my house?”

“No.” A single word, as short and violent as a slammed door. Jason rolled his lips together, pressing the skin white, then flashed a tight smile at the boy. “I don’t. So let’s go to yours.”

“Jay—“ Dick began, but Jason waved him off, already striding down the hall with Bruce. Dick exchanged worried glances with Alfred, then followed, and the two of them caught up to Jason and Bruce just as Jason carried Bruce into the room and set him on the bed.

Bruce sat in the middle of the king-sized bed—his bed—and looked around with a frown. It was an adorable look, Dick had to admit, but the expression was too eerily similar to the one that would later become a semi-permanent fixture on a much older face.

“This is my room?” Bruce asked, tone ticking upward disbelievingly.

Jason stepped back, arms crossed, and had the decency to look uncomfortable with his own decision. “Yeah.”

Brow furrowed, Bruce took in the dark furnishings, the pulled drapery, the somber bedding. There was a family portrait on the end table, and Dick sidled over to block it from view before the little boy could get a good look at the people displayed there.

“Where are my toys?” Bruce asked. Little fingernails scratched anxiously against the bedspread, the _zzt zzt zzt_ muted but audible in the quiet room.

“You haven’t needed toys in some time, Master Bruce,” Alfred answered at last, when it appeared no one else would.

“Because I’m taller,” Bruce finished, not quite understanding but remembering nonetheless.

“… Yes, sir.”

Bruce’s gaze traveled the room again, teeth sucking on a full bottom lip as he searched for something he couldn’t find. “But not Hooper?”

The lip-worrying increased when Alfred remained silent. “Alfred? Where’s Hooper?”

Dick and Jason exchanged glances. Jason shrugged, palms upturned. _Who the heck was Hooper?_

Alfred cleared his throat, then spoke, sounding a little strained, “I’m afraid Hooper is in the wash, Master Bruce. He’ll be at your side in the morning, but not tonight.”

“Alf, I need Hooper.” Bruce rose up on his knees. “I need Hooper, Alf. I need Hooper _now_.”

“Tomorrow, Master Bruce. But it is long past your bedtime, and it is time to sleep.”

Jason, seeing an out, began backing toward the door. “Yeah, I better head home and get some shut-eye myself. Nice, uh, meeting you, kid.”

Bruce, already wide-eyed and red-cheeked over the mysterious missing Hooper, turned his full attention on Jason. “You’re leaving?!”

The little boy leapt off the bed, ignoring calls from all three adults to stay where he was and mind his feet, and barreled into Jason before the vigilante could do more than flinch.

“Don’t go!”

Jason grunted as small arms wrapped around his waist and a head collided with his solar plexus. “Kid, I—“

“ _Please!_ ” Bruce begged. “Please don’t go! I don’t want to be by myself!”

Jason knelt and tugged on Bruce’s arms until the boy was forced to let go and step back. “Calm down. You’re not by yourself. Alfred’s here, and Dick. You don’t need me sticking around.”

Bruce had no way of knowing how big of a miracle it was that Jason had stayed as long as he had. Seeing Jason walk the Manor halls… Dick knew he would have to recount each detail to Bruce once he was full-grown again.

Little Bruce was shaking his head. He leaned forward, hand cupped to mouth, to whisper in Jason’s ear, but Dick was still able to catch his breathy confession. “I’m scared. Alf’s face looks funny and his hair’s all white. I don’t want to stay with strangers.”

Jason smirked. “I thought I was the stranger, huh?” he teased. His fingers tweaked Bruce’s earlobe, and in the dimly lit room, he looked almost… fond of the boy.

But Bruce was not to be teased. “Please,” he pleaded again.

Jason’s jaw worked back and forth. Dick held his breath. Blue-green eyes flicked up, past Bruce’s shoulder to Alfred, then Dick, then back down to Bruce.

“Fine.” Jason leveled a finger at Bruce. “But just for tonight, understand? Now stop talking and get ready for bed.”

Dick had seen it happen before, but he still felt a frisson of shock run down his arms as Bruce lunged forward once more and threw his arms around Jason’s neck. 

“Thanks,” the little boy said, and quickly smacked a kiss onto Jason’s cheek before hobbling back to the bed.

“We will bid you both a good night, then,” Alfred said. He placed the stack of clothes on the bed—borrowed pajamas for both visitors—then gestured for Dick to follow him to the door. Jason frowned, either still reeling from Bruce’s unexpected gesture or only now realizing that Bruce expected him to stay in the same room as well, but Dick gave them both a smile and a wave before he could speak.

“See you both in the morning. ‘Night, Jay. ‘Night, B,” Dick said, then pulled the door shut.

As soon as the door closed, Alfred turned and walked quickly down the hall. Dick followed. “What do you make of _that_?” he asked.

“Master Bruce was always an excellent judge of character, even at a young age,” Alfred replied. “He would know that Master Jason means him no harm, as the whole of this night has proven.”

“Night and morning,” Dick pointed out with a yawn. “I’m beat. G’night, Alf.”

Dick turned to head down the hall, but a firm hand hooked onto his elbow swung him back in the other direction.

“I’m afraid that I am in need of assistance, Master Dick,” Alfred said, not sounding regretful at all. If Dick didn’t know any better, he would have said the imperturbable butler sounded flustered.

“Alfred?”

“That child never gave me a full night’s sleep a day in his life,” Alfred muttered as he marched onward. “I wager that we have approximately seven hours before he wakes up and all bloody hell breaks loose.”

“Alfred?” Dick asked again, concern rising. Alfred had picked up speed, making Dick nearly trot to keep up.

Alfred stopped below the pull cord to the attic. With a grunt, the butler pulled down the ladder and began the ascent, pausing partway up to look down at Dick.

“Somewhere up in this labyrinthine hoarder’s paradise Master Bruce calls an attic, there is a box, and in that box is a soft toy in the shape of a brown owl that goes by the appellation of Hooper. We have seven hours, Master Dick. Seven hours to find that owl and clean it of two decades’ worth of grime before that child wakes up and has a fit such as you’ve never seen.”

Dick gaped up at Alfred, then rubbed the drowsiness from his eyes. “Guess we better get started, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never said we would be 100% Jason POV the entire time. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ He'll be back, I promise!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Jason threw up his middle finger at the portraits as he headed downstairs. It didn’t make him feel better, just more like himself. He wished he hadn’t left his guns down in the Cave._

Jason hadn’t slept well. He hadn’t expected to, but having those expectations become reality still made him grumpy. Baby Bruce was just as clingy asleep as he was awake. He was also, to Jason’s displeased surprise, a kicker. Jason was convinced he was going to have bruised ribs. But even if Bruce had been as still as a corpse, Jason would have slept poorly.

It was this house, and the memories it held. It was this room—the soft sheets that smelled like Bruce’s cologne and Alfred’s detergent, the family photos that watched Jason with unblinking eyes, the little brick-a-brack of life that, though neat and orderly, still adorned the room and waited as if the real Bruce had only stepped out for a stroll and would be back soon. It was Jason’s own room, lurking down the hall and out of sight but patient and present like a black hole.

Honestly, Jason was surprised he had slept at all, so he was even more surprised when he woke to find that Bruce was gone. If Jason panicked a little at first, he would never admit it to anyone. However, once he untangled himself from the twisted sheets and poked his head out into the hall, he could hear voices drifting up the stairs from the kitchen, Bruce’s young squeak among them.

After ducking back into the room to change, Jason headed down. He tried not to picture himself as he was, skulking through the sunlit halls of Wayne Manor in his combat pants and snot-smeared t-shirt under the noses of the Wayne family portraits. He’d always hated the gallery, even when he’d liked living in the house itself. He’d always felt every inch the grimy street kid with all of the lofty forebears of the Wayne family tree glaring down at him. 

Jason threw up his middle finger at the portraits as he headed downstairs. It didn’t make him feel better, just more like himself. He wished he hadn’t left his guns down in the Cave.

Jason paused just outside the kitchen door, hands jammed into his pockets as he studied the scene before him. Introductions must have already happened, because the kitchen was full, with Bruce in the center, and no one was shouting. Dick sat on the counter like a barbarian, feet kicking lazily as he shoveled cereal into his mouth. The girl—Cassandra—sat cross-legged on the kitchen table, a banana half-eaten in her hand as she watched the others with a slightly cocked head. The Replacement was slumped in a chair to her right, and Jason had a hard time telling if he was actually awake or if his eyes just happened to be open.

In the center of the tiled floor, Bruce and Damian were facing off. Or, rather, Damian was circling Bruce warily while Bruce made himself dizzy trying to follow. Just being around the little al Ghul made Jason’s teeth grit, something Jason actively fought against, not for Damian’s sake, but because he hated agreeing with the Replacement on anything. 

Still, Jason supposed it would make a bad first impression if he hoisted the kid by his waistband and chucked him out a window. So Jason watched from his place in the doorway and wondered if he could—should—leave before anyone noticed.

Damian circled Bruce twice more before stopping directly in front of the smaller boy, his extra years allowing him to sneer down his nose at his pint-sized father. “You are inadequately sized,” he said.

Bruce’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t answer.

Damian tried again. “Why are you so small?”

Bruce’s head reared back indignantly. “I’m _six_ ,” he said, voice so full of baffled affront that Jason barked out a laugh.

Immediately, five heads turned in his direction. It was easy money, betting what would happen next. The little demon would attack him, likely railing something about the sanctity of the Manor or the foulness of Jason’s shadow. The Replacement might join in as well, since it was clear that he _was_ awake, if barely. Dick would try to step in, probably, and maintain control over a rapidly devolving situation. Cassandra was an enigma, but Jason had to assume she hated him as much as the others, and she was the only one who displayed a level of skill in the field that would truly worry him if turned his way.

Or maybe they would realize that if he’d wanted any of them dead, he would’ve done the job last night while they were all asleep in their beds and not in Alfred’s kitchen.

And maybe the rugrat in front of him would bippity boppity boo back into his adult self and pull Jason into a big ol’ bear hug.

Damian opened his mouth, lips already pulled back into a snarl. Tim’s hand tightened on his cup. Cassandra and Dick both leapt off of their respective perches. Jason stayed where he was, smirk cemented to his face while his stomach sank. Even after so long, even though it was his fault, it still bothered him that he would always be seen as a threat first.

Jason was so focused on the danger in front of him that he nearly jumped out of his skin when Alfred coughed behind him.

“Good morning, Master Jason. Sleep well?” Alfred asked as he stepped past Jason into the kitchen. He didn’t try to touch Jason, for which the younger man was grateful just as much as he was for the butler’s presence. No one dared spill blood on _Alfred’s_ freshly bleached grout.

“Like the dead,” Jason drolled. He didn’t have time to see what reactions that drew as socked feet pattered across the kitchen to meet him.

“Jay!” Bruce crowed. Jason recoiled slightly at the name, and in his periphery, he could see some of the others do the same.

“Uh, hey, Br–“

“Look look look, Alfred found Hooper! Jason, this is Hooper. Hooper, this is Jason. He’s my friend!”

Jason stared down, bemused, at the muddy brown ovaloid Bruce held up for inspection. Two scuffed yellow eyes stared back from behind tiny, wire-rimmed pince nez. The body was almost half Bruce’s size, but sagged from stuffing loss. It had pointed, fluffy ears like a cat but nothing else looked cat-like. And below the eyes… was that a beak?

“What is it?” Jason asked over Bruce’s chatter.

“Master Hooper was at one point an incredibly life-like recreation of a great horned owl, also known as a tiger or hoot owl,” Alfred supplied. “He has been well-loved since his arrival. A bit more than Master Bruce recalls him being, I’m afraid.”

“A _bubo_ vir- _virginianus_ ,” Bruce added, stumbling a bit over the Latin. “He didn’t use t’look like this. He needs more stuffing. Alfred said he’d get more stuffing after breakfast.”

“Uh-huhhhh,” Jason said slowly. Behind Bruce, the others watched with undisguised interest. “And he has… glasses.”

“It’s not acc’rate,” Bruce conceded as he lovingly straightened the spectacles on the bird’s beak. “Owls have great vision. But they’re his, and they make him look smart. Hooper is very smart. And brave.”

Right. Nothing about this conversation was good for his image. Maybe Jason wasn’t thrilled about the others thinking the worst of him, but keeping them respectful was an invaluable tool.

Bruce was still prattling away, but Jason cut him off. “Yeah, uh, look, kid, I said I’d stay until morning. And it’s morning. So…”

“Zatanna will be here shortly,” Dick said before Bruce could object. He stepped forward, hands loosely shoved into his pants pockets, and widened his elbows in an inviting shrug. “None of us were close enough to see anything. It would be a big help if you could stick around and tell her what happened.”

Jason looked past the older man to the three sets of wary eyes trained on his every move, and to Alfred, who was studiously ignoring all of them as he tidied the breakfast mess. “Dick…”

“Please?” Dick stepped in close enough for Jason to see the pleading in those sincere baby blues. “For the kid. For all of us. So we can get back to normal.”

“Because normal was so great for me,” Jason muttered.

“Jay—“

“Fine, fine. But only until your magic freak gets here.”

Jason regretted the promise the moment it left his lips. Dick smiled and placed a hand on Bruce’s head, who jerked away and stepped out of reach in Jason’s shadow. Jason was hyper-aware of all of it, of the whole room, of every expectation and every glance sent his way. He had to be, here. He felt like a scrawny street kid again, waiting for the fist to come whistling out of the dark.

Maybe Dick saw Jason’s regret and panic, because he nodded down at Bruce. “You should get some breakfast. Dames and I’ll take him down to check on his feet.”

“Why me?” the demon brat demanded, but Jason noticed he still came to Dick’s side.

“Wound education.” Dick squatted down and clapped his hands together before holding them out to Bruce. Bruce and Jason leaned away in tandem. “Come on, B. I gotta look at your feet.”

“No.” Bruce, already partially hidden behind Jason’s leg, pressed his cheek against Jason’s thigh and glared back at Dick.

“Yes,” Dick countered, but with a kind smile. “You don’t want them to fall off, right?”

It was just a joke, but Jason looked down and watched Bruce’s eyes widen with terror. _Dick, you idiot, you can’t **say** things like that._

“My feet won’t fall off,” Bruce protested, but he didn’t sound certain.

“Dick—“

“They might,” Dick said, talking over Jason’s warning growl. “So come on.”

“Fa—Bruce,” Damian interrupted, the command in his high voice clear. “Come away from Todd.”

Jason and Bruce turned their attention to the boy with twin frowns. Jason opened his mouth to say something ill-advised, but Bruce beat him to it.

“Why?” he asked, cheek lifting slightly off Jason’s leg to level a dubious pout.

“Because he’s a psychopath and a murderer, and you are better than him.”

Both Dick and Alfred snapped Damian’s name as Jason gave the boy his best dead-eyed stare. He was gratified to see a tiny flicker of fear on Damian’s face. Jason didn’t care what the demon brat thought of him. The title _murderer_ was rich coming from an al Ghul. Still, it made something hot burn in his stomach, knowing Bruce heard. That Bruce knew and would believe it.

Jason’s fingers twitched as a small, warm hand grabbed his.

“He’s my friend.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Damian began, but Bruce cut him off.

“You’re not nice, and I don’t like you.”

Two bright spots of color appeared on Damian’s cheeks. “I am _protecting_ you, because you don’t know any better.”

“Damian, don’t.”

“Yeah, shut up, brat. Who do you think has been ‘protecting' Baby Bat this entire time, huh?”

“Jay, don’t talk to him like—“

“Or what, Dickie?”

“Bruce, go with Grayson.”

“No! Stop bossing me!”

It was Damian who lost his patience first. The boy’s hand shot out and grabbed Bruce’s wrist, who immediately let out a wailing howl of rage, latched onto Jason’s leg with one arm, and with his free hand hit Damian upside the head with Hooper. Dick leaned forward to pull Damian away, but Jason let out a yell of his own and shoved Damian. Not hard, not with his full strength, but enough to make the boy stumble back and release Bruce’s wrist.

Suddenly, Dick wasn’t yelling at Damian but was instead at his full height and yelling in _Jason_ ’s face. Tim and Cass were on their feet as well, Tim loudly and Cass not at all but still too close for comfort. Damian was screaming in an ugly mix of languages and somehow had a pocket knife that Dick kept trying to grab even as Dick shouted at Jason, and Jason swore back, and Bruce was wailing like the banshees in the old storybooks atop it all. And _then_ the biggest dog Jason had ever seen came charging around the corner, howling in pitch with Bruce, and Bruce’s tantruming cries turned into screams.

“Oh shit, the dog, the dog, get the dog!” Jason yelled over cries of “Titus! Down!” and “Dame, the _dog! Get the—!_ ” and “ _Master Damian_ , get that beast _out_ of my—!”

Jason threw his forearm out, blocking the dog’s path and bracing for sharp teeth to pierce his skin even as he reached for Bruce. But Bruce was gone, disappearing out the door and down the hall, Hooper abandoned on the floor by Jason’s feet. Jason followed, the shouts and barks of the kitchen receding as he followed the boy back up the stairs. He caught up just in time to see the tail of a baggy pajama shirt disappear into the nearest room.

Jason’s room.

Jason froze on the threshold, toes curling at the edge where carpet met wood, unable to take a step. He felt as if Ivy’s vines had shot up from the floor and wrapped him head to toe.

Late morning light spilled in from the window and tumbled across the overturned sneakers in the middle of the floor, still resting where Jason had toed them off. Next to them, a dropped backpack spilled textbooks, homework notes, and a crumpled candy wrapper onto the carpet. His posters were still on the wall, a kaleidoscope riot of bands, movies, and artwork. His laptop sat on the desk, open but dark, waiting for him to run his finger across the trackpad. A faded pink post-it still clung to the corner of the screen, _MK 11a 3OR_ scrawled in Sharpie. He couldn’t remember what it meant. His hoodie, now several sizes too small, hung over the back of his chair where he’d tossed it, having planned to come back and hang it up before Alfred could scold him. Even the book he had been reading still lay open and facedown on his bed, spine cracked by the steady weight of time.

There wasn’t even dust on the furniture.

Jason gripped the doorframe and sucked in three deep breaths. The air was clean but stale, like a model home or a car left to rust in a garage. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t see this. Jason shifted his weight, preparing to pull the door shut and walk away, when a loud, wavering sniffle crawled out from under the bed.

_Bruce._

Jason leaned back and looked down the hall. The hallway was empty. Downstairs was quiet. A small sob drew his attention back to the room.

_You can do this, you can do this, you can do this. It’s just a room. It’s not… It hasn’t been yours for a long time. It’s just a room of some slob of a kid. This isn’t your room. This isn’t your house. Just check to make sure the kid’s breathing and get out._

With aching slowness, Jason stepped from the shadowed hall into the room. He kept his eyes on the bed, resting his hands on the green and brown quilted bedspread Bruce had let him pick out. For just a moment, he ran his finger over the stitching, tracing the familiar patterned thread. Then he braced himself against the mattress and knelt.

“Bruce?”

No answer, just a breathy sniff.

Jason lowered himself onto the cream carpet and peered under the bed. Bruce stared back from the shadows, his hands curled tightly under his tear-dripped chin.

“Hey,” Jason said softly. “You okay?”

Bruce shook his head once, nostrils flaring as he bit back another sob.

“Okay. You having another panic attack?”

Bruce’s breathing seemed thready and erratic, but not quite to attack level yet. The little boy confirmed Jason’s guess with another short shake of his head.

“Alright. That’s good. Let’s keep it that way. Can you match my breaths?” Jason took a deep breath in through his nose, then exhaled through his mouth, watching to make sure Bruce did the same. He tried not to look at the detritus lurking in the shadows around and behind Bruce. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to remember. Instead, he watched the tear roll down the side of Bruce’s nose and splash on his lips, then another as Bruce fought a sob.

“Roll onto your back.” Jason nodded reassuringly at Bruce’s doubtful look. “Go on.”

Jason rolled onto his own back without waiting to see if Bruce obeyed and folded his hands on his stomach. The ceiling above him hadn’t changed either. The tacky glow-in-the-dark stars he’d bought with his birthday money one year still spangled the off-white paint. He knew if he stared long enough, he would be able to pick out the faint outlines of a fourteen-year-old boy’s attempt at constellations in a midsummer’s sky. He closed his eyes instead.

“My mom said sometimes it’s good to float away,” Jason murmured. This, this he could remember instead, lying on the grimy rug in their tiny living room, his head next to Catherine’s during one of her glorious sober days. “You pretend your stomach’s a balloon. You breathe in to inflate, out real slow to deflate, and if you do it right, you just… float.”

Behind him, he heard Bruce suck in a shaky breath, then slowly let it hiss out again.

“Yeah, like that,” Jason whispered. He and his mom would floated together, just the two of them, and he would pretend they were gliding silently on a flying carpet or drifting in a still lagoon in some exotic paradise far, far away from Gotham. He remembered lying next Catherine when she was higher than a kite, carried away by her latest fix further than he could reach, and he would breathe and float like she taught him, hoping that maybe he could reach her and pull her back down to earth.

Jason let his hands fall off his stomach to the floor and dug his fingers into the deep, lush fibers. In some ways, living here had felt like floating. He’d been so far above the filth of Crime Alley. It was his own fault. If he hadn’t let himself fly so high, the fall wouldn’t have been so painful.

“I’m scared of dogs,” Bruce whispered from beneath the bed.

Jason huffed a laugh, glad to be away from his own thoughts. “Yeah, no kidding.” Like the murdered-by-a-serial-killer scream didn’t give it away. “He was a pretty big dog, though. Made me jump, too.”

“Are you scared of dogs?” Bruce asked.

Jason shook his head, hair rubbing comfortably against the carpet. “No. I don’t like ones that bark like that, though. Street dogs… street dogs can get mean. I wouldn’t have minded having a cool dog, though.”

“Your mom said no?”

Jason let out a hard breath. “I didn’t have to ask, kid. She… It wouldn’t have been a good idea.”

Bruce thought about this for a moment, ever a problem-solver, even as a kid. “Well, what about your dad?”

“He died.” Jason wasn’t sure if that was something you could tell a kid, especially a kid like Bruce. Did rich kids know their parents could die? Or was that something they had to watch to believe?

“Oh,” came the whisper. “That’s sad.”

“It’s okay.” Jason tried not to think of Willis or the few good times amid all the bad. “I didn’t really like him.”

Another pause, and then Bruce spoke again, his words so slow they were almost tiptoe as they stepped around a new idea. “My friend DeeDee, his daddy left, and his mom married a man, and the man adopted him, so now he has a new daddy. Maybe you could get ‘dopted, too.”

Jason’s fingers clenched, white-knuckled against the carpet, and waited for the wave of pain to finish rolling over and through him. He didn’t know what made him speak. This room, maybe, this house, or the temptation of speaking to someone who wouldn’t understand.

“I was,” Jason whispered, so low and quiet that the words hovered in the air above his lips. “I had a dad.”

Bruce still heard. Ears like a bat. And a heart too sensitive for a little boy. “Did he die, too?”

Jason opened his eyes, suddenly desperate to see those cheap plastic stars instead of the flash of sickly green against the dark of his eyelids. As he stared up, his eyes ached, then misted over, then ran clean.

“He didn’t want me.”

The truth settled over the room, as thick and weighted as a shroud. Then a small hand brushed against Jason’s temple, its owner reaching back blindly from underneath the bed. Jason closed his eyes tightly, bathing his eyelashes in tears as he turned his head and rested his forehead against soft fingertips.

They lay in comfortable silence, the quiet of the room broken every now and then by a stuttering breath from Bruce as his trauma wound down. Jason kept his eyes closed, blocking out the world. If he kept his eyes closed, he could be in any room, in any house, in any city, anywhere in the world. Or he could be, just for a moment, a tired fifteen-year-old boy lazing in the sun on his bedroom floor while his dad studied paperwork in the den below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been eighty-four years, but finally! An update! Thank you all for being patient. I got stuck on a problem and... pushed the problem off to the next chapter, so we'll see how THAT goes. And yikes, blocking is noooot my thing. This family is too big. Sorry.
> 
> Also, my first use of fic profanity. Courtesy of Jason, of course. (Courtesy of Jason protecting Bruce, of course!)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Tim took another sip of whatever was in his mug, grimaced, then said, “You can sit down, you know.”_
> 
> _Jason, who had taken to scraping at the snot stain on his shirt with one fingernail, looked up sharply when he realized Tim was speaking to him._
> 
> _It was only when he began to sit that Tim muttered into his mug, “Not like I was gonna **shoot** you or anything.”_

When Jason and Bruce returned downstairs, Alfred met them in the hall outside of the kitchen. He must have known where they had been. But he ignored Bruce’s tearstained face and the way Jason couldn’t meet his eyes, and Jason loved him a little more for it.

“There will be formal apologies aplenty shortly, but for the time being, I believe breakfast takes precedence.” Alfred ushered them into the kitchen as he added, “Or, in this case, brunch.”

The kitchen had emptied of its occupants except for the Replacement. Jason, though relieved he didn’t have to deal with Dick and the brat, stopped at the sight of Tim still slumped at the table. Bruce wiggled to be put down. Jason bent, eyes still on Tim, and lowered Bruce to the floor.

“Master Dick and Master Damian are downstairs, as is Miss Cassandra. Cheerios, Master Bruce?” Alfred offered.

“Yuh,” Bruce grunted as he crossed the tile and climbed up into a chair across from Tim.

“What was that?”

“Yes, please,” Bruce sang, then eyed Tim. “Why is your face hurt?”

Tim lowered the mug he’d been nursing, giving Bruce and Jason both a better look at the dark circles under his eyes and the small white bandage across the bridge of his nose. The effect made his pale face look even paler. Jason wondered if he had bought into the nocturnal life, or if he was that pasty naturally.

“Because I didn’t duck fast enough.” Tim’s ghostly blue eyes kept flicking in Jason’s direction, but otherwise he did a good impression of someone at ease. Or maybe just tired.

“Master Jason?” Alfred prompted as he finished pouring Bruce’s bowl. 

“Uh, Cheerios are fine, Alf. Thanks,” Jason mumbled. He glanced around the room, unsure of what to do or where to go. The only chairs were at the table, and he wasn’t about to plop down across from the Replacement. Sure, he hadn’t tried to kill the kid in months now, but it was still awkward.

“What’s your name again? I forgot.” Bruce swung his dangling legs back and forth, the trauma from earlier seemingly forgotten.

“Timothy.” Another fleeting glance at Jason. “Tim. Tim Drake.”

Bruce laughed. “That’s a boy duck. That’s funny.”

“Master Bruce.” Though without bite, Alfred’s tone made Bruce hunch his shoulders up to his ears. “Is it polite for a gentleman to make fun of another’s name?”

“So-orry,” Bruce intoned, sincerely, from what Jason could tell.

“S’kay.” Tim took another sip of whatever was in his mug, grimaced, then said, “You can sit down, you know.”

Jason, who had taken to scraping at the snot stain on his shirt with one fingernail, looked up sharply when he realized Tim was speaking to him. Tim didn’t repeat himself, but instead looked to the empty chair next to Bruce, then took another sip from his mug. Jason hesitated, wary of some kind of… not a trap, not in front of Alfred, but _something_. But Alfred placed both bowls of cereal on the table—Jason’s favorite Knights baseball helmet bowl and a faded red Mickey bowl for Bruce—then returned to wipe down the counters, and Bruce was prattling away about something else, so Jason slowly crossed the small distance to the table and pulled out a chair.

It was only when he began to sit that Tim muttered into his mug, “Not like I was gonna _shoot_ you or anything.”

Jason froze, butt hovering above the seat, and snapped a glare up at Tim. Tim met the look, gaze wavering and struggling to hold firm. But then his lips twitched behind the lip of the green mug.

He was… joking?

Jason wanted to go back to bed and start the day over again. Or the whole week. Yeah, the whole week was better. It was all getting too freaking weird. He sat the rest of the way and ate his Cheerios in guarded silence, elbows planted on the table and forearms curled around the plastic cereal bowl. To his relief, Tim returned his attention to nursing his mug of coffee or whatever it was.

Bruce talked the entire way through breakfast. He was like the Thing That Never Shut Up—rehashing the scares of the night before (“—an’ then we _ran_ and I hurt my feet”), describing a bird he had seen on the windowsill that morning, and telling story after rambling story. As he talked, his legs swung back and forth beneath the table. When he reached a point that really excited him, his feet swung out to either side, socked toes brushing against Jason’s calf.

Weirdly, Jason didn’t mind. The little boy’s chatter washed over him like white noise, smoothing out the jagged edges of the Manor’s prickly memories. Bruce didn’t seem to need much encouragement, just a grunt here and there, allowing Jason to eat his breakfast in peace. It allowed him time to dunk his Cheerios under the milk with his spoon and studiously ignore the way the moment felt. The familiarity of the scrape of the spoon against the plastic helmet bill, the braided rug under his socked feet, and the soft glow of late morning light all wrapped around him like a once comfortable sweatshirt now a size too small.

Jason caught Alfred watching his newly young charge with a wistful expression that was carefully tucked away again every time he marked Jason’s attention. Tim seemed impervious, for the most part, though Bruce’s ramblings kept him quiet as well, and he studied the little boy with a keen and clinical eye that reminded Jason uneasily of a scientist on the edge of roguish behavior. He knew the Replacement was devoted to Bruce in his own way, but he didn’t know what his limits were, or what shape that devotion took.

In the middle of one of Bruce’s recitations, Alfred passed the table and quietly placed two small, white pills down next to Tim’s elbow. Tim, who had been grimacing and massaging his temple, lowered his hand to give Alfred a weary smile. Bruce missed none of it.

Rising up on his knees, Bruce leaned as far across the table as his small arms could reach and touched his fingertips to the bruises under Tim’s eyes. Tim went completely still. Jason, watching from the sink where had taken his and Bruce’s bowls, did the same.

“Your head hurts?” Bruce asked, young voice high but utterly serious. Tim’s chin dipped minutely in a nod. Bruce’s bottom lip puckered thoughtfully as his fingers touched the bandage on Tim’s nose.

“I’ll kiss it better,” Bruce decided. Tim’s brows disappeared into his droopy bangs, and his eyes widened to such a comical size that Jason would have laughed out loud if he couldn’t feel his own face doing the same.

Jason watched with stunned amusement as Bruce put one knee on the table, hefted himself across the distance, and touched two tiny, pink, puckered lips to the bridge of Tim’s broken nose. Then Bruce pulled back and sat in his own chair, pleased. Tim seemed to have forgotten how to blink.

Under the sudsy water in the sink, Jason’s fingers curled, remembering the unexpected warmth of a small hand in his.

“Is this really what he was like?” he asked Alfred quietly. Alfred turned his attention to Jason, one eyebrow raised inquisitively.

“With the talking and the… the touching,” Jason added.

“Yes.” Alfred’s reply was slow and hushed, as if unspooled from a memory. “I had nearly forgotten. He was forever clinging to his father’s leg or reaching for his mother’s hand. And the noise, good heavens. There were days I thought my ears would grow so full of noise that they would fall from my head.”

Alfred chuckled and took the bowl Jason offered him to dry as he continued, “He was such a bright little boy. Caring, intelligent, far more intelligent than anyone knew how to handle. He loved to be around those he trusted.” 

The butler gestured vaguely with the hand towel. “His parents, the staff, and the like. Strangers were another story altogether.”

“He had a panic attack at my place,” Jason murmured. “Two, actually. Which, I get it, in the moment, but he made it sound like it happens a lot. Happened a lot, I mean.”

A soft exhale from Alfred. “Ah. I _had_ forgotten about those.” He looked across the kitchen to where Bruce was happily peppering a still stunned Tim with questions. “This family has never been what would be considered a glowing example of mental health, I’m afraid. But we do our best.”

_But what **happened**?_ The question crouched on Jason’s tongue, testing its perch the way a diver might his board before the plunge. How had that cheerful, fearful, affectionate little boy turned into… Bruce?

Before he could ask, Tim joined them at the counter. Bruce’s attention had been snagged by a black and white cat—which, _What in the world? I die and the Manor turns into a zoo? No fair._ —and was busy asking the furball its name as he held out a hand for the beast to sniff.

“So,” Tim said, planting his bony elbows on the upper counter. He leaned forward, his scrawny shoulder blades piercing the air like wings. Jason made a mental note to find out if the kid ate. Not that he cared. Just curious.

“Are we taking bets? How much of this do we think he’s going to remember later?” Tim asked.

Tim was unperturbed, but Jason’s vision turned gray at the edges. Remember? His gaze flew to Bruce, who was giggling as the cat ran its tail under his chin. He thought of clutching Bruce to his chest as he barreled through his fire escape window. Of coaching the boy through his panic attack after his bloody nose. Of letting him ride piggyback. Of sleeping curled side by side. Of the things he had admitted upstairs. He hadn’t thought… Bruce couldn’t _remember_.

“Is that… is that possible?” Jason asked. God, he felt like he was floating, and not in a good way. He felt like his head was detaching from his freaking body. He felt like his actual soul had just Kool-Aid Man’d out of his friggin’ chest and was now watching dumbstruck from above at the _idiot_ who forgot who that kid was and would be again.

Tim gave him a funny look, but didn’t mock him for the stupid question. The slowly leaking balloon that was Jason’s consciousness appreciated the courtesy.

“Yeah, maybe,” Tim answered. “I mean, it depends.”

To be fair, Tim looked a little off-balance himself now, but that might have to do more with the fact that he and Jason were speaking civilly for the moment. The other boy hesitated, likely waiting for derision or dismissal from Jason, but when none came, he continued.

“We don’t know what Bruce that is, really. I mean, we know he’s a kid, but _how_ is he a kid?” Tim began ticking off the possibilities on his fingers. “He doesn’t remember being an adult, so it’s not just his body that’s affected. He wasn’t mini-me’d. So what other possibilities does that leave?”

Jason stared. He’d never heard the Replacement say more than five words in his presence that weren’t a defense of Batman or a threat. _How does this day keep getting weirder?_ But Tim was on a roll now, and Jason didn’t have the wherewithal to interrupt, in any case.

“Maybe it’s a straight time swap. Maybe this really _is_ Bruce from 1980-whatever, and our Bruce is back there. Like in _The Kid_ except a swap instead of both occupying the same time. Which makes sense, because quantum physics. Or maybe there was no swap, and our Bruce just sort of… blinked out for a bit, and this one is here in his spot. And once we send him back, ours will slide back into place again, but this one will grow into ours, so the memories stay.”

It was the weirdest friggin’ thing to watch. Tim was still clutching his mug like it was the only thing keeping him standing, and now that the shock of the boo-boo kiss had faded, his eyelids were back to a droopy half-mast. Yet here he was, saying things like _because quantum physics_ and rationalizing… what, the quantum entanglement effects of actual magic?

Jason was glad to have a new reason to hate the kid. It made him feel grounded again.

“It could be, though,” Tim continued, really getting into his lecture now, “that _that_ is our Bruce.” 

He pointed back at the little boy, who was currently squat-walking after a cat doing its best to ignore him. The way Jason was trying to ignore the repeated use of _our_ , actually. “He could have been sort of… _rewound_ back to his childhood self. So whenever Zatanna fixes this, it’s just a matter of whether the events will be retained when he’s fast-forwarded.”

Tim shrugged. “If it’s one of those, then yes, he could remember, or at least he could remember some. It was a big enough and scary enough event that I doubt his mind will be able to entirely erase it. He might be able to remember most of it, actually.”

For a moment, Tim looked troubled by the thought as well, though Jason wasn’t sure why. _He_ didn’t have Bruce’s snot crusted on his t-shirt. But with the end of the lecture came the end of the Replacement’s strange talkativeness. He glanced at Jason and registered whatever expression was currently twisting Jason’s features. It must not have been serene—Jason was too numb to say for himself—because the tips of Tim’s ears turned pink, and he looked away quickly.

“Anyways,” Tim said quietly, “it could be something else. I don’t know.”

Jason was painfully aware that he wasn’t… That is, this wasn’t his home. Not just in the excruciating, heart-shredding way he normally felt it, the way that made him fantasize about spray-painting large penises on its gates or quietly weep on the floor of his former room with the toddler-sized version of his erstwhile father. No, right now, he could feel the thorny prickles of awkwardness climbing up his insides at the realization that he was standing in day-old clothes and socked feet in _Tim/s_ home, and that the uncomfortable silence strangling the kitchen and growing larger by the second was because he—the interloper—was letting it.

And all he could think to say was, “You really are a nerd, huh.”

Oh did he get peak Alfred glare for _that_. Jason cringed and considered (only considered) apologizing, but it seemed to loosen the boy up.

Tim shrugged easily and said, “Could be worse.”

Jason bristled. “Oh?” What, he could be Jason? Gutter scum? A criminal?

Tim leaned forward across the counter and stretched into Jason’s space, but only to drop his empty mug into the sink. “Yeah. I could have picked the ditzy playboy route like Bruce and Dick.” He shuddered. “Too many parties.”

_Yeah, okay, fair._

* * *

Zatanna arrived just after lunch. Alfred went down to meet her, along with Tim, leaving Bruce and Jason to follow. Bruce, who was now sporting a band-aid on his finger after a nip from the cat, was once more clinging to Jason’s hip like a baby chimpanzee.

Jason had decided, for his own sanity, not to mind. After all, who was he? Red Hood, that’s who. 

Did Red Hood care what other people thought? No, Red Hood did not.

And why was that? Because he was too cool for that. 

Did Bruce Lee care what other people thought? Did Steve McQueen? Emma Thompson? Joe Cool? No, they did not. Because they were too cool for that. 

Definitely cooler than some stupid baby birds. Cooler than stupid Nightwing and his stupid hair, that’s for sure.

So yeah, he carried Bruce downstairs into the Cave like a maidservant toting a basket of laundry. What was he going to do? Make the kid walk? On those feet? Not a chance. 

Jason didn’t spare a glance for the others, even if their collective stares made the back of his neck prickle. (Cassandra must have noticed, because she looked away first, which only intensified his unease, even if she was trying to be kind. He didn’t know what her deal was, but her freaky skills were something else.)

“B,” Jason said, more gruffly than he intended, “this is Zatanna. She’s going to take a look at you to see if she can get you back to… um, taller.”

Could he really say normal? Was Bruce _ever_ normal? Also, would it hurt the kid’s feelings if Jason implied that he wasn’t normal right now?

_Oh this needs to be over. Right now._

Jason wanted his guns, his apartment, and his sanity back, immediately.

Ignoring Zatanna’s greeting, he plunked Bruce down on the cot and stepped back until he stood behind the others. He had never felt fully comfortable around the magician even as Robin. Now that he was walking the earth again under less than mundane circumstances, he felt it best not to attract interest from her kind.

Bruce, who had been studying the Cave with blatant interest, now turned his full attention to Zatanna.

“Hi,” Bruce chirped. “I’m Bruce.”

Zatanna smiled. “Yes, I know.” She offered her gloved hand, which the little boy shook. “I am Zatanna. I am here to take a look at you and see if we can make you better.”

Bruce’s head cocked to the side. “Are you a doctor?”

“Of a kind.”

A deep frown furrowed Bruce’s brow and puckered his bottom lip. “Are you going to give me a shot?”

“I didn’t think he’d be so cute.” Jason’s head jerked to the side as Dick faded back to stand next to him. He grunted in reply.

“I mean, I’ve seen the photos,” Dick continued under his breath, low enough that they could still hear the exchange between Bruce and the magician. “I knew he was, you know, little-cute. But this is…”

Another grunt. Dick took a heavy pause, then said, “I’m sorry about before. I overreacted. We all did. Damian was out of line, and he knows it.” He shifted his weight, gaze drifting from Bruce and Zatanna to the scowling little boy off to the side. “He’ll be apologizing to both of you once Zatanna leaves. And he’ll mean it.”

“Don’t you worry about it, Sheriff Taylor,” Jason drawled. “I’m sure Opie didn’t mean no harm.” He flicked a look out of the corner of his eye at Dick. “He tries something like that again, though, and I’ll stuff him in the oven. I’m just surprised he didn’t come at me with that knife from the start.”

Dick had stiffened at the threat, but now slowly relaxed again as Jason’s wry tone brushed aside any lingering grudge. He snorted, amused. “If I’m Andy, what does that make you? Gomer? You’re more Danny Tanner than anything. You’ve picked up the single dad tricks awfully fast, Jay. That kid trusts you more than he does _Alfred_.”

“If I’m anyone, I’m Uncle Jesse, but cooler,” Jay muttered. What? No. No, he wasn’t buying into this pseudo-paternal thing Dick was trying to pin on him. “No. You know who I am? Viper. Because Viper was cool with the band and the tattoos and stuff, even if he did date the wrong sister.”

“Who was he supposed to date, _Michelle_? DJ is obviously the superior sister,” Dick hissed.

“Cooler than Stephanie?” Jason retorted. “I don’t think so, Dickie.”

“Aunt Rebecca, you tasteless nimrods, and will you two shut up?” Tim shot over his shoulder.

Jason and Dick subsided into a grumbling peace to watch Zatanna finish her exam. The investigation itself wasn’t anything Jason could really follow. There was a lot of hand waving, some nonsensical muttering, and a couple small flashes of light. Gosh, he hated magic.

“It is not a very good spell,” was the final verdict. “Ambitious and powerful, yes, but shoddy. The work of an arrogant or desperate amateur.”

“But is it going to get worse, or is this the full effect?” Dick interrupted. “Can you reverse it?”

Zatanna straightened the cuff of her glove. “I believe this is the full effect, yes, and no, I cannot reverse it.” 

She held up her hand, cutting off the cries of dismay that filled the cave. “It will reverse on its own, in time. As I said, it is a shoddy spell. Essentially, the caster has reversed Bruce’s age and wound back his life. My guess is that they were trying to rewind him entirely but were unable to go that far.”

Zatanna smiled and touched a finger to Bruce’s nose, who was frowning quizzically. “Lucky for us. The changes in his body from biology and age, the memories hardwired into his brain, all have been temporarily reversed, like reversing a film to watch the sunflower return to its seed. But there should be no permanent damage.”

Tim turned to Dick and Jason and waggled three fingers. _Option three,_ he mouthed. Jason ignored him.

“What do you mean you can’t fix it?” Jason demanded, forgetting for the moment that he wanted to go unnoticed.

“I mean that crossing different magics is like crossing chemicals. Unless you know them very well, it’s best to not, especially when the mixing is happening in something as complicated and fragile as the human brain.” Zatanna rested her hand on Bruce’s head, ruffling his curls. Bruce, to Jason’s relief, didn’t seem to fully understand the conversation. He thought there would be more hyperventilating otherwise.

“So how long will the spell take to wear off?” Dick asked.

Zatanna shrugged. “Unclear. Based on the strength and inefficiency of the spell, I would not be surprised if it sloughed off in pieces, like a sunburn. It doesn’t have the skill to hold forever, but the strength of it means it will do its best.”

That was… less than encouraging. The others shared a bleak look with each other, in this one event united in their unease. Only Cassandra and Bruce seemed unperturbed.

Once Zatanna had left and Alfred examined Bruce’s feet, the rest of the Cave’s occupants trooped back upstairs. Bruce once again shunned Dick’s offer of a ride and made Jason piggyback him up the steps. He seemed just as interested in the mechanisms of the clock and the hidden stairs as before, but at least this time Narnia was not considered a valid explanation.

It was only when they had entered the main body of the house that Jason realized that Zatanna hadn’t asked him any questions about what had happened. Jason huffed a sighing laugh, but stopped as he entered the hall and found Dick and Damian waiting for them.

Dick had his hand resting on Damian’s shoulder. He gave the boy a small push forward when Jason and Bruce appeared. Damian stumbled forward, arms tightly crossed over his chest. He looked angry enough to murder someone with his bare hands, which Jason might have found hilarious in someone his size if he didn’t look so much like his grandfather.

“I am to apologize to you for my behavior earlier,” Damian began, words ground out through narrow lips and a tight jaw. Dick nudged him again, earning a glare before Damian turned his attention back to Bruce.

“I apologize for my rudeness, for grabbing you, and for Titus frightening you. Grayson has taught me that not everything should be vocalized, even if it’s true.” Another nudge, which prompted a low growl from Damian before he corrected himself. “Even if I believe it to be true.”

Dick rolled his eyes but let it be.

Damian’s gaze flicked up to Jason and away again. Small white teeth chewed uncertainly on a bottom lip, almost making Damian look his age. “You have behaved honorably thus far, Todd. It has been noted.”

Before Jason could respond or decide if he wanted to, Damian’s attention returned to Bruce. “And I am sorry that Alfred bit your finger.”

“Alfred is the cat,” Dick explained as Jason and Bruce blinked in synchronized confusion.

During Damian’s apology, Bruce had spurred Jason with his heels to be put down and face the other boy eye to eye. Jason now had a perfect view of the slow dawning delight on the little boy’s face.

“Alfred… is the cat,” Bruce repeated. He turned and looked up at Jason, eyes alight. “The kitty’s name is _Alfred_.”

Jason shifted his feet, struggling against the feeling of reality slowly shifting out of place again as Bruce beamed up at him. In the left corner of his mouth, barely visible except in Bruce’s brightest smiles, was a dimple.

He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten Bruce had a dimple. It was there in the Knights photo, the one Jason used to keep by his bed of him and Bruce sitting behind the dugout at the first baseball game they’d gone to after his adoption. The one where Bruce kept introducing him to everyone around them as “my son, Jason.” He’d forgotten how he’d bent over backward trying to earn a smile wide enough to bring it out again. He hadn’t seen it once since coming back, and he hadn’t even missed it, because he’d _forgotten_.

_What else did I forget?_

It was a question he couldn’t shake, even as the day progressed. Jason found himself frowning at familiar corners, trying to compare his Before with his Now. What was the same? What was different? And what hadn’t he noticed because he’d been so locked in what he thought he saw?

He felt pulled in two different direction—one that said he needed to see this through with Bruce, and the other that was screaming to leave. Jason hadn’t shaved or changed his clothes, and he was pretty sure he was on his way to smelling. Even more than that, he needed just ten minutes where he could step out of the last twenty-four hours and sort through what was going on.

Bruce was _six_. Jason was in the Manor again. He’d had a conversation with the Replacement and no one was bleeding. The Demon Brat had apologized. Every time he thought he had a grip on his life, something shifted. He just needed ten freaking minutes to himself.

So why was he sitting in the kitchen again, hands curled around a glass of water?

Jason glared down at his bruised knuckles and called himself every kind of coward. Bruce was upstairs napping on Alfred’s orders. There was nothing to be done about the spell except wait. He wasn’t needed here.

A liver-spotted hand reached down and gently patted Jason’s. “It has been good having you home, Master Jason,” Alfred murmured, “even in these less than ideal circumstances.”

“About that, Alf.” Jason hesitated, rubbing this thumb against the condensation on the side of the glass until it squeaked. “I stayed to help out, but I really gotta… I can’t stay here. You get that, right?”

“You can,” Alfred replied, but his touch was gentle as he patted Jason’s hand again and then stepped back. “But I understand the difficulty. At least stay until Master Bruce wakes from his nap. It would be unkind to leave without saying goodbye."

It might have been a suitable plan. Not perfect—Jason badly wanted to bolt—but a compromise enough to let him leave without feeling like he was breaking Alfred’s heart. The old butler, at least, had earned the trust he had been given.

It might have been a suitable plan, before the screaming.

Jason was moving before his brain had fully registered the noise. He slid across the slick kitchen tile, slamming into the doorjamb and then careening out into the hall at full tilt.

“Bruce!” he bellowed as he vaulted over the bannister onto the stairs. “Bruce!”

It wasn’t Bruce’s terrified wail or his upset howl. It was a full-throated _scream_ , high and panicked with pain. Like he had made in the bathroom, with his veins glowing green. Like he was dying.

_”My guess is that they were trying to rewind him entirely…”_

Oh god. What if the magician hadn’t failed?

“BRUCE!” By the time Jason reached Bruce’s bedroom, the others had joined him, sprinting from other parts of the house. He reached for the door and tried to throw it open, but the door only shook.

“Get it open!” Dick yelled.

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Jason rattled the handle. The door wasn’t locked, so why— “He’s blocking the door!” If he pushed, the door opened just enough for Jason to see Bruce’s blue shirt through the crack. The boy lay on the floor, jamming it from opening with his small body.

Damian sprinted back down the hall, shouting about a window.

“Bust down the door!” Tim ordered.

“You can’t!” Dick cried. “You’ll hurt Bruce!”

And that was when the screaming cut off, as if severed by a knife. Jason looked at the others, his own fear reflected back in their wide eyes and pale faces. The screaming had been bad. The silence was so much worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I realized I forgot to share the reference I used for Hooper! My bad. Picture this guy, but with way too much love roughing him up and a jaunty pince nez on his beak: https://bit.ly/2Mbhiq1
> 
> Second, I know it makes no sense to put the kitchen sink on what essentially is an island, but rich people kitchens are weird, and it's what worked for my blocking, okay? Okay.
> 
> Third, I have no idea how to write Zatanna, so I hope you guys weren't hoping for some quality Z time. She was the freaking road block holding up the last chapter. I couldn't figure out how to move on with her there, so I delayed her intro until this chapter and skipped over her as best I could. Sorry not sorry, you got an update in under a month this time. (Even if the proofreading is shoddyyyyyy.)
> 
> And lastly, fun fact! Remember Kimmy's boyfriend Duane? He's Scott Menville, aka the voice of Dick in the Teen Titans series. Also the dog who played Comet was also Buddy in Air Bud. Air Bud relates to absolutely nothing in this fic. I just wanted to share.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Damian hesitated, then asked, “You… are still Bruce Wayne, are you not?”_

Damian was not afraid. He didn’t feel emotions so base as fear. Grayson said that fear was good, that it enabled caution and prevented foolhardy mistakes. Grandfather said that fear was for the weak. Damian was not weak.

Still, he was not so prideful that he could not admit to being… uneasy with the situation at hand. Damian was not bothered by the magic, though he was angry that some second-rate sorcerer had dared target his father. No, unlike Todd or Drake, Damian was comfortable with the existence of magic, the same way he felt about electricity or nano-computing. His grasp of its mechanics might only go so far, but he respected its power and utilitarian nature.

What Damian didn’t like was the uncertainty. While not having a father for a time was less than ideal, it was hardly a state unfamiliar to him. Not knowing when the state would be reversed, however, left Damian feeling as twitchy as Grayson after trying one of Drake’s special energy drinks. He didn’t want to wait. He wanted to _fix_.

It was almost a relief when the crisis erupted. Abruptly, the scenario changed from _Problem: Baby father; Solution: ??? Wait??_ to _Problem: Blocked door + potential danger; Solution: Damian to the rescue!_

Damian took off down the hall before anyone could call him back. No one did, all attention fixed on the horrific screams coming through the door. Bursting into his room, Damian threw open his window and shimmied out onto the narrow ledge that wrapped around the side of the Manor. The ledge itself was part of the decorative facade and a complete security risk. Damian could only assume that it hadn’t been dealt with because the others found it just as useful as he did for avoiding the front door. It certainly was helpful now.

Damian sidled along the exterior of the Manor, shuffling his feet as quickly as he dared. He could envision precisely how the next few minutes would play out. He would reach Father’s window in the next three seconds, push the pane up, and dive into the room, landing on his feet after a perfectly executed tuck and roll. He would assess the situation quickly and decisively, render pertinent medical aid, and then unblock the door for the others. Grayson would be so proud of him. Even Todd and Drake would be impressed. Perhaps Alfred would pat his shoulder. And then, once Father was back to himself, Damian could tell him all about it.

The prospect excited Damian so much that he was nearly smiling as he reached the bedroom window and heaved it open. Not that he wasn’t concerned about the screaming little boy inside—he was. He merely considered the problem surmountable. Fixable.

That is, until the screaming stopped.

Something about the silence made the skin between Damian’s shoulder blades prickle and tighten. It wasn’t just the lack of noise that worried him, or the way the screams had cut off cleanly. It was the heaviness of the silence, the way its fullness filled the room like a dense fog. The silence had a weight to it. Not an absence of something, but an addition.

Damian had his knife out before his feet hit the floor. Crouched beneath the window, he scanned the room, looking for the threat. The bedroom was still. No visible danger lurked in the late afternoon shadows. The bed in the center of the room was unmade, the comforter spilling over the side and trailing on the floor as if freed from a tangle of moving limbs. The discarded fabric stopped mere feet away from the huddled body curled against the bedroom door.

At first glance, the child looked as still as the rest of the room—not lifeless, thank goodness, not with how tightly curled its arms and legs were. At a second, Damian noticed the too-rapid breathing that shook its torso. He frowned thoughtfully. Something about the body was wrong. He recognized his own clothes, the too-large cloud leopard t-shirt and gym shorts Alfred had borrowed for the young version of his father. That, combined with Bruce’s earlier screams, indicated that this _was_ Bruce, as expected, but… something was off.

_Father?_ The name hovered on Damian’s lips like a sparrow perched for flight, but he captured it in time to replace it with “Bruce?”

The head lifted, raven’s wing curls fluttering around a pale face set with blue eyes. 

Damian sucked in a hissing breath and rocked back on his heels. The door rattled, startling them both. The boy flinched as the edge jabbed against his back.

“Bruce?” Todd, of course.

At the voice, the boy reared back against the door, slamming it shut again.

Damian continued to stare. The boy stared back.

“Master Bruce?” Alfred, this time. The boy’s chin jerked to the left, stopping before his attention could completely leave Damian.

Damian’s gaze took in the shaggy curls, the pronounced bone structure, the draping of the clothes, the length of the legs. The resemblance to himself, despite the strong al Ghul characteristics showing in certain aspects of his own features, was uncanny. However, this was not the boy Damian had quarreled with in the kitchen.

Still crouched, Damian extended a hand, gesturing for the boy to wait and hold still. Then he lifted his chin and called, “Pennyworth, we may have a situation. Step away from the door."

“Dames?” Damian frowned as Dick spoke next, sounding just as close as the rest.

“Back, Grayson.”

He could hear muttered conferring in the hall, but he ignored it. Damian looked to the boy. “You need to come away from the door.”

The boy stared back but didn’t move.

Damian hesitated, then asked, “You… are still Bruce Wayne, are you not?”

The gaze shifted from wary to suspicious, but the boy—Bruce—nodded.

“Then you are familiar with Alfred Pennyworth.” Damian flicked his eyes at the door, then returned his attention to the boy. “Let him in.”

Bruce scowled, ran a fist across his snotty nose, then held up a finger.

Damian’s head tilted to the side as he considered. “Just Alfred?”

Bruce nodded again.

Damian gestured for the boy to move away from the door. Bruce uncurled and scuttled forward, limbs held stiffly as if his joints ached. Perhaps they did.

The small mob outside the door was behaving for now, but Damian didn’t know how long that would last. As soon as Bruce had moved fully out of the way, Damian charged forward and opened the door just enough to stick his head out. Four faces with varying degrees of pale fright stared back at him.

“Pennyworth only,” Damian ordered crisply. Three mouths opened to protest, and he scowled. “Pennyworth _only_. F—Bruce is requesting it.” He looked to the old butler, the only outwardly calm member of the group, though his lips were pressed thin and white. “I believe your knowledge will be useful as well.”

Pennyworth dipped his silver head in a stately nod, then turned to the others. “Please return downstairs. I shall see to young Master Bruce and will call should assistance be needed.”

A whining chorus of _But Alfred_ s rose. Alfred raised one well-groomed eyebrow. To Damian’s surprise and secret delight, the whines devolved into grumbles and all of them—even Todd—turned to trudge downstairs. Damian was determined to learn Pennyworth’s trick of shouting without raising his voice, for the butler managed to call chores after the other boys until they disappeared from view.

“Well,” Pennyworth said once he was alone in the hall, “that should keep them occupied. Now, Master Damian, let us see what the trouble is.”

Damian ducked his head back inside the room, then backed up enough to let the old butler in. Bruce remained where Damian had left him, crouched on the floor with his back against the side of the bed. He looked up when Damian and Pennyworth entered but didn’t rise from the floor. Pennyworth carefully shut the door behind him with one hand, then faced the boy fully. 

If pressed, Damian would admit to admiring several things about Alfred Pennyworth. He had his flaws and foibles, of course, but, for a servant, Pennyworth possessed above average intelligence, excellent housekeeping skills, and his cookie-baking was top notch. And no one, not even Father, not even Todd, could best Pennyworth in retaining a self-possessed expression. Damian wagered that the man could stare down even Grandfather.

So it was more than a little alarming to see the change on Pennyworth’s face as he looked down at the boy. It wasn’t a dramatic change—Pennyworth was only ever dramatic deliberately—but to Damian, who was accustomed to the steady stillness of the butler’s face, the minute changes in expression were startling. The shallow intake of breath, the slight widening of the eyes, the tensing of the jaw, none of these boded well.

Bruce, for his part, stared up at Pennyworth with red-rimmed but dry eyes.

“He’s older,” Damian murmured. “Isn’t he.”

The boy was visibly taller, though he remained huddled on the floor. His face, while still a child’s, was slightly thinner with a more prominent bone structure. His longer hair also marked the passage of some time, curling around his eyes like a feathery curtain.

“Yes,” Pennyworth agreed in a hushed voice. “Around ten, I would wager.” He raised his voice slightly to address the boy, “Isn’t that right, Master Bruce?”

Bruce nodded, head bobbing with a wary slowness.

“The magic must be slipping,” Damian announced, “just as the witch said.”

Damian would have preferred that Father return immediately and at once rather than in dribs and drabbles, but this was at least progress. He could deal with progress, no matter how slowly it came, as long as it did come. That said, he was not unaware of his current advantages. What other boy would have the opportunity to observe their own father while at an equivalent age? One of the Flashes, perhaps, but otherwise, this was a unique opportunity. Damian had sometimes wondered what Father had been like as a child, beyond the wry statements on past behavior from Pennyworth, and now a golden opportunity presented itself.

“Are you in pain?”

Damian’s attention returned to the present scene at Pennyworth’s question. The butler had stiffly lowered himself to one knee in front of the other boy. Damian frowned and then sucked on his upper lip as he regarded the pair. Something about the question sounded off, like there was something he was missing.

Bruce hesitated, then shook his head slowly. At a look from Pennyworth, he shook his head again, more decisively this time.

“Pennyworth,” Damian began slowly, “why—“

“We should rejoin the others,” Pennyworth said, cutting him off. Damian blinked in surprise. “It seems we have much to discuss. Come along, Master Bruce.”

The old butler grunted under his breath as he braced one hand against his knee and pushed to his feet. Bruce watched him, the strip of skin between his eyebrows marred by a deep, pensive crease. His gaze skittered to Damian, uncertainty darkening his blue eyes.

“Come along,” Damian commanded. He didn’t know what was going on, and he didn’t like it. He also knew he was more likely to get answers if he brought Pennyworth and the boy before the others. Todd, for all his many, many flaws, had a unique obstinacy when it came to having questions answered, and Grayson would be keen to learn more as well.

Damian threw open the door, and after several more minutes of coaxing, Bruce rose and followed Damian and Pennyworth out into the hall. Even then, it was slow going. Whatever pain he had felt in the transformation seemed to have bled from Bruce’s joints, but he moved at achingly slow speeds down the hall. Every small thing seemed to attract his attention—a vase, a discarded shoe, an open door, a photo frame. Nothing was different from the last time Bruce had walked down the hall, so Damian couldn’t understand the fascination and chafed at the speed.

Finally, they reached the kitchen. Damian entered first, and nearly ran face-first into Grayson and Todd. Drake, showing good sense for once in his life, had elected to sit back down at the kitchen table rather than hover by the door.

Damian snorted in disgust and waved them both back, cutting through the barrage of questions. “Back up, both of you. Let them through, you imbeciles.”

“Yes, do give us some room.” It was more than a little irritating that Alfred’s cool voice could send both men scuttling back faster than Damian’s order could, but Damian couldn’t pretend he didn’t understand. He and Jon were both convinced that the butler did have latent powers, and as soon as Damian could procure a sample of DNA for Jon to test at the Fortress, they would prove it.

Then Bruce stepped into the kitchen, and a stunned silence spread across the tile like an oil spill.

“He’s ten now,” Damian offered. He liked knowing things they didn’t. “That’s what the screaming was, the changing. The spell’s slipped, like the witch said it would, so that means we’re closer to having Fa—Bruce back.”

Damian expected Grayson to open the first line of questioning, but instead, his brother looked to Todd. The other man had a strange look on his face, like he was having trouble swallowing. Todd, always the unspoken hobgoblin of the family lore, had confused Damian exceedingly since his intrusion the night before. Damian had been certain Todd had spirited Father away for the sole purpose of murdering him, but had since learned that Todd had not only had been intending to help all along. Not only that, Todd also had protected Father from extreme peril at great risk to himself. Combine that with the events of this morning, and Damian had growing suspicion that _perhaps_ at times there was more going on beneath that unintelligent visage than he had realized. Like now.

Todd squatted down so he was eye level with the boy. “Sorry we couldn’t get in there in time. You alright?”

There he went again, talking in a voice Damian had never heard before. It wasn’t that it was _scary_ , but Damian felt a weird twist in the bottom of his stomach nevertheless.

Bruce didn’t answer. Damian frowned. Todd frowned. Everyone frowned—except, Damian noticed, Pennyworth.

“What’s the matter, kid?” Todd asked. “I couldn’t get you to shut up all day, and now you go quiet?”

He reached out to Bruce, then froze as Bruce stumbled back a step and half hid behind Pennyworth’s leg. Even Grayson and Drake looked stunned. Damian found himself holding his breath as Todd stared at the boy, then slowly raised his gaze to Pennyworth’s.

“Alf?”

“I cannot be certain, but I believe Master Bruce has lost his memory again.” Everyone was staring at Pennyworth. Only Damian was watching Bruce and saw the boy’s gaze rocket upward with a puzzled frown at “again.”

“So he doesn’t remember anything that’s happened?” asked Grayson, trying to bring sense to the madness. “None of it?”

Pennyworth looked down at the boy standing just behind his trouser leg. “Master Bruce, do you recall falling asleep in your room?” 

A slow shake of the head. 

“Do you recall spending the morning here, with these young gentlemen?”

Another shake, and Damian felt the air tense. 

Pennyworth’s voice softened. “Do you remember anyone in this room?”

Bruce lifted one finger to point at the butler, then dropped his hand and stared suspiciously at the other occupants of the kitchen.

Damian could swear he saw Todd pale.

“That makes sense,” Drake said slowly. “If the spell is resetting him biologically to a certain age, his brain wouldn’t be able to retain memories formed here, because they didn’t exist when Bruce was that age.”

No one look comforted by the science, even Drake.

Todd stood and turned away, combing his fingers roughly his hair. Grayson cast the other man a concerned look—assessing the risk of violence, Damian suspected—then asked Pennyworth, “Why _isn’t_ he talking? Is… did the change damage something?”

Bruce had begun to pick at his nails, fingers twitching as he chipped away at skin and keratin. Except for the few sharp looks he had given Pennyworth, his features were strangely dull. It was like the longer they talked, the more he withdrew into his own head, which was the opposite of both versions Damian had seen previously, both as an adult and as a child. He couldn’t understand it.

Pennyworth pressed his lips together, then looked down at the boy. “Master Bruce.”

Bruce looked up from his nails, then wiped his nose on the back of his hand before disappearing into the hallway, as quiet as a ghost.

“Alfred,” Grayson hissed as soon as Bruce was out of the room, “what the h—“ His eyes cut to Damian, then back to Pennyworth. “What is going on?”

Damian was torn between keeping an eye on Todd, whose tense shoulders signaled violence at any moment, and paying attention to Alfred. Drake, from where he sat, was the only person with a clear view of Todd’s face, which he was currently studying intently. He looked worried, but not afraid, which Damian supposed would have to do.

“That kid,” Grayson pointed at the now empty doorway, “was the clingiest, chattiest kid since… since…”

“Since you,” Pennyworth finished drily.

“He hasn’t said a word since he came down the stairs,” Grayson finished, bulldozing over Pennyworth’s remark.

“He didn’t speak upstairs either,” Damian offered. Grayson pointed his way emphatically. 

“Not remembering…” Grayson faltered, his gaze skittering to Todd and then back to Pennyworth, “not remembering anything is bad enough, but this is—he shouldn’t—“

Pennyworth looked like he wanted to sigh, but it was a noise he rarely made except to make a deliberate point. With one last look back at the hallway, Pennyworth gestured for them all to have a seat at the table. Grayson immediately pulled up a chair next to Drake, and Damian took the chair next to him. Todd strode over to the kitchen window and looked out, hands gripping the windowsill.

“He is ten,” Pennyworth said simply, once they were seated and looking up at him. “When he was eight, his parents were murdered in front of him in cold blood.”

As one, they all winced, though it was a story they had heard many times before. Even Damian knew each detail—the theater, the alley, the mugger, the gun, the pearls.

“When he was nine, once all of the investigations and searches that money and the law could provide were exhausted, he simply…” Pennyworth spread his hands wide, a rare gesture of helplessness, “…stopped talking.”

“What do you mean he stopped talking?” Drake asked.

“Just what I said, Master Timothy.” Pennyworth’s voice was crisp again, with none of the inefficient softness of a moment prior. “A year after his parents’ death, Master Bruce stopped speaking entirely. He would not resume until two years later, and even then… He has never been known as an easy conversationalist.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Damian noticed that Todd had turned around to face them. He was leaning against the windowsill, fingers still tightly griping the ledge, but that was the only tension left in him. His limbs were loose, his shoulders casually slumped. Damian wasn’t sure what those pieces became when placed together, but it made him nervous.

Grayson ran his fingernails against the side of his scalp in a frustrated, zigzagging scratch. “Do you know what made him stop? Or what made him start again?”

He was too soft. Damian could practically see Grayson’s heart bleeding through his faded blue t-shirt. Not that Damian didn’t understand, in a way. It bothered him, thinking that Father was in any way _less than_. But Father’s trauma was nothing they could fix. It was in the past, and… and there was no way to… Damian pursed his lips thoughtfully as he stared at the empty doorway.

“No. I asked once, but Master Bruce wouldn’t say. I was concerned about causing him to revert, so I never asked again. And the one we have now is, by my estimation, at least six months from being ready to say anything at all.”

Damian knew how the conversation would go from there. Someone would ask what they should do next. Grayson would fret and try to look wise but look concerned instead. Alfred would give instructions Damian had no intention of following. Drake would mumble some fact that solved nothing. And Todd would threaten violence of some kind, though Damian wasn’t sure what kind, since he still wasn’t certain why the man cared to begin with.

Instead of watching the scene play out, Damian slipped from the table, edged around the kitchen island, and disappeared into the hall. He had half-expected Bruce to be skulking outside the door, hanging on every word, but instead found the boy down the hall in the den.

Bruce stood in the center of the rug, slowly rotating as he took in the room and, Damian suspected, its many small changes. He didn’t look over when Damian entered, or even seemed to acknowledge there was another person in the room. It was appallingly lax personal security, but it gave Damian time to study him afresh.

He was still on the smaller side, several inches shorter than Damian. What height Bruce had gained was stunted by the way he stood with his spine curved and shoulders hunched. Dead parents or not, Damian would have expected Pennyworth to break the boy of his poor posture long before now.

Similarly, his hair was a disgrace. It was too long, or not long enough. The feathery strands were long enough to curl, but short enough to be messy, clinging to Bruce’s eyelashes and tangling behind his ears. Damian had nothing against long hair on men, but he felt one must commit to a length. The unkempt in-between reeked of apathy. His fingernails, Damian noticed, were worn down to nubs, but still he picked at them as he turned about the room.

“That’s Grayson’s.”

Bruce had reached hesitantly for a handheld gaming device on the couch, but arrested his movement when Damian spoke. The unexpected voice made his shoulders tense visibly, yet Damian was surprised that he didn’t startle.

Bruce looked over his shoulder at Damian, then shuffled about until he was facing the newcomer.

“Do you really not talk?” Damian asked. Bruce’s eyelids dropped a fraction of a millimeter, the hooded expression somehow expressing his exact level of Unimpressed without his gaze losing any of its alarming dullness.

“You wouldn’t shut up earlier,” Damian muttered. Bruce turned away, once again more interested in the room.

Damian was growing impatient. “It’s been over twenty years. There are bound to be some changes. I could tell you what you want to know if you ask.”

_That_ caught Bruce’s attention.

Damian nodded, proud to have valued information. “You were cursed by a wizard, who turned you back into a little boy. You were six years old up until a half an hour ago.”

Bruce rubbed his thumb against his bony wrist thoughtfully, likely thinking of the pain that had left him huddled on the floor. He didn’t look convinced by the story of a wizard—according to the others, magic and all that entailed hadn’t been in Gotham until fairly recent in the city’s history—but that was fine. He knew something was wrong, and he knew Damian knew what.

In the kitchen, the low voices had grown much louder—mostly Todd, but with some exclamations by Grayson thrown in. From the sound of it, Pennyworth’s swear jar would be greatly enhanced this day. It also sounded like they were moments away from bursting out into the hall. Todd would be in one of his storming moods with Grayson and Drake on his heels, either arguing or cajoling, depending on what Todd was upset about this time. (Damian didn’t agree with the strange relationship Grayson had with his successor, but he understood the outline of it. Drake’s willingness to deal with Todd baffled him, however.)

Damian found he didn’t want to give up the boy’s attention. “Let’s go to my room.” He spun on heel, ignoring Bruce’s puzzled frown, and marched toward the staircase. Thought diminutive, Damian still expected the boy to follow, and so he did.

“This is my room,” Damian announced, pushing the door shut just as the noise level skyrocketed downstairs. “I believe it was a standard guest room in your time.”

Truthfully, Damian hadn’t done much different with the space. Grayson and Father both had offered to help him redecorate—Grayson eagerly and Father awkwardly—but Damian had declined. He didn’t care about personalizing his space as long as the sanctity of its boundaries were observed. So the room likely looked much the same as it had in earlier years, though with a new layer of possessions.

“You may sit on my bed,” Damian offered with a graceful incline of his head.

Bruce ignored the offer, instead wandering over to the desk. He picked up one of Damian’s school assignments and held it aloft.

Damian tilted his head uncertainly. “Yes, I am studying the parts of speech. I know them well, of course, but the American public school system is grossly—“

Bruce waved the paper, making it crinkle and rattle. He pointed to the top corner.

“Oh.” Damian flushed a little. “Yes, that’s my name.” His lips curved into a rare smile. “Damian al Ghul Wayne. I am your son and heir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, I never promised that Bruce would stay six. Or that it would be wholly Jason POV. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Hopefully you guys are still on board, because we've got a good deal of ol' Wayne psyche to unpack still.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Damian was not above fibbing to accomplish a goal. Nor was he above drastic measures for a good cause._

Damian didn’t understand children. It was one of many reasons that he bristled when he was called one. He understood intellectually that he was underage, a child according to the law and human biology, but he didn’t consider himself one any more than he considered himself Irish, despite that technically being true through paternal heritage.

Children—other children—were… strange. Their thought patterns were alien to Damian, their desires small and narrowly focused. The things they were interested in bored him, their actions and reactions appeared opaque and illogical. Not that Damian was around other children often. He knew of a few other young trainees in the League but had never been near them. Father had discussed Gotham Academy, but thus far, home tutelage had sufficed. Grayson had tried to facilitate encounters at the local park, but Damian had floundered to find common ground.

Damian had assumed that Father would have been a different story. That the Batman-ness that set him apart was innate, and that it was that inherited characteristic that separated Damian as well. Instead, the morning had brought a young Bruce who had been distressingly ordinary. Rather than a smaller version of Father, this Bruce had been just as baffling as the other fools Damian had met. Damian’s only advantage had been in a handful of familiar expressions that had crossed the young face from time to time, juvenile versions of familiar terrain. In all other regards, the child Bruce had been very un-Batman in his softness. He had seemed so small and vulnerable. Poke him and he would bleed.

Whereas this Damian-aged Bruce seemed likely to bleed when breathed upon.

But perhaps they were more alike than they seemed. Perhaps there was some commonality that Damian could grip tight with both hands and turn into something. If only he could get Bruce to talk to him.

“I can tell you these things because you won’t remember,” Damian assured Bruce confidently within the privacy of his bedroom. “Ordinarily, there are strict rules to prevent a collapse of the space-time continuum and the world as we know it. But you’re not from a different time, and you won’t retain this knowledge for future use once we’ve fixed you, so it’s fine.”

Bruce did not look assured.

Downstairs, the noise had crescendoed, then abruptly cut off with the wall-rattling slam of the front door. Bruce flinched, shoulders hunching until he was buried up to the tips of his ears. Damian’s lip pulled back into a delicate sneer.

“That was Todd. Leaving, thank goodness.” At Bruce’s look, Damian climbed up on the bed next to him, crossed his legs, and rested his hands upon his knees. “He is complicated and unpleasant. I assume he cannot always have been thus, or you would not have adopted him. Although perhaps you would have, given his situation. You did take in Drake, after all.”

Damian paused, expecting curiosity and interest. He had elided full disclosure deliberately, hoping to elicit questions. Instead, the only indication that Bruce was even listening was a small furrow between his brows as he stared out the far window.

“Don’t you want to know what your future is like?” Damian demanded. He couldn’t imagine going through life with so little curiosity. Sure, their brushes with alternate universes and future timelines had revealed some unpleasant truths on occasion, but he would rather know than be left in the dark.

Bruce’s gaze flickered his direction, then away. Other than the quiet scraping of his fingernail against the callous on his thumb, he remained still and quiet.

Damian huffed and uncrossed his legs before crawling across the bed. Stretching his full length, he snagged the photo frame from the end table, then crawled back next to Bruce.

“Here.” He placed the frame in Bruce’s hands. “The witch says the spell will wear off in fits, so there’s no telling how long you’ll be ten this time. You need to know who everyone is.”

Bruce was still staring out the window, so Damian reached out and tapped his cheek. Instead of his usual, apathetic head turn, Bruce startled so violently that he dropped the photo frame.

Damian held up his hands and held his breath. For just a moment, it seemed like Bruce was _there_. His blue eyes were wide open instead of drooping, and when his gaze connected with Damian, it felt like there was someone present and looking back.

_Please don’t go. Stay. Pay attention. Be the person you’re **supposed** to be._

But even as Damian watched, the light in Bruce’s eyes began to fade.

Damian shoved the frame back into Bruce’s hands. “Look.” It was a digital display with photos cycling through every few seconds. Damian jabbed his finger at the first faces to appear. “That’s me. And that’s Grayson. Richard. Richard Grayson. He’s your ward. He’s proficient in nearly a dozen fighting styles, including aikido, capoeira, and savate. He’s an officer of the law in Bludhaven during the day, and by night he…”

Damian’s gaze slid sideways toward Bruce, then back to the frame. “… helps.”

Bruce stared down at the photo, perhaps studying the wide, easy grin on Grayson’s face or the way he had his arm slung around Damian’s shoulder. The frame cycled to the next photo.

“That is Jonathan Kent, his father Clark, and his brother Conner. Clark Kent is your friend. He says we may call him Uncle Clark, but I will not.” Damian sniffed. “I suffer beneath the burden of too many unrelated relations as it is.”

“Damian?”

This time, both boys startled at the knock on the door. Damian scowled. “What is it, Grayson?”

Grayson pushed over the door a crack. “Alfred would like you both to come back downstairs.”

“Now that you’re done arguing, you mean.” Damian uncurled his legs and slid off the bed before motioning for Bruce to follow. “And that menace has fled.”

“Jason… needed a break,” Grayson said after a brief hesitation. He pushed open the door fully, looking first to Damian and then to Bruce. “It’s been a long day and a half. For all of us, but especially him.”

“Just because he hasn’t been allowed to slaughter, beat, or otherwise maim anyone recently?” Damian scoffed. “I bear the same burden and yet I manage to keep my temper."

Grayson, to Damian’s annoyance, ignored him. Crossing the room, Grayson squatted down next to the bed so he was eye level with the still-sitting Bruce.

“Hello,” he said, tone gentle and warm. “My name’s Dick.”

The name was enough to pull a skeptical look from Bruce, which made Grayson’s lips quirk upward. “I know. Believe me, I’ve heard it all, especially from this one.” He jerked a thumb back at Damian.

Damian scowled, but he continued to watch the exchange with interest. He would have preferred to be the one to break Bruce’s silence, but if anyone could, it was Grayson. The man could be alarmingly persistent.

“Alfred sent me up to fetch you two and to check on you.” Grayson tilted his head, a lock of hair falling across his forehead. “Sounded like it hurt earlier. You feeling alright?”

Bruce’s lips puckered and slid sideways as he shrugged.

“Are you hurting?”

Another shrug. Damian wanted to shake him.

“Bruce.” Grayson’s voice, though still kind, held a hint of Batman, not that Bruce would know. It was the same tone Alfred had used earlier, that implication of something more. “Alfred told me the rules. You have to tell me if you’re hurt.”

Bruce lifted his head. There, again, something shifted behind his eyes, concentrating into something like his true self, making his blue gaze burn. It was like he resented… what? Being forced to answer? Being forced to talk with a stranger? Being forced to be here, in this moment? Like so many things, Damian couldn’t tell, and he hated not understanding.

Bruce shook his head once, a decisive, stony jerk of his chin.

“Good. Time to head downstairs, then.” Grayson pushed himself up and offered Bruce his hand.

Bruce stared at the extended hand blankly, and Damian huffed in irritation. “Come _on_ ,” he ordered as he hurried out the door.

Behind him, Grayson kept up a line of quiet chatter as they paraded back down the stairs. There was nothing said of interest to Damian, just reassurances of protection and care and apologies for the confusing situation. Bruce responded to none of it.

Downstairs, Pennyworth was waiting. “Thank you, Master Dick,” he said, nodding at the younger man before turning his attention to the two boys. “Master Dick has business to attend to elsewhere today, so I will be keeping you boys with me.”

“Where are you going?” Damian rounded on Grayson, his fists planted on his hips.

“Out.” Grayson smiled and ruffled Damian’s hair as he passed.

“Grayson—“

“Out, Dames. I’ll be back. Keep an eye on B for me and help Alfred.”

And then he was gone.

Damian turned back to Pennyworth and found the butler standing before his young master. “I assume Masters Damian and Dick have explained the situation to you, but here is the summation. We are at present many years into your future. The magic of stories is real, though still rare, and yesterday you were cursed by a wizard or someone of that ilk, changing you from a grown man back into a boy.”

As unruffled as the butler was, he seemed to hold an intense distaste for magic users, nearly as intense as Todd’s. As best Damian could tell, Pennyworth’s feelings came from his dislike of disorder. Damian thought Pennyworth had picked a bad city to spend thirty years in if disorder bothered him.

Bruce stood with his head tilted back to stare at the old man, his face smooth and blank. His eyes were still red-rimmed but the color was fading, and his fingers continued to pick at each other, but otherwise he was still. Pennyworth paused for a reaction and, receiving none, let the straight edge of his shoulders ease a fraction.

“You are safe here, Master Bruce. I cannot promise that you will be without pain or that all will be without trouble, but you have devoted your life into making this the safest residence in all of Gotham. Understood?”

It was unclear whether Bruce _believed_ Pennyworth, but he did nod his agreement.

To Damian’s displeasure, the next few hours were spent assisting the old butler in household chores. Drake had conveniently vanished, leaving Damian and Bruce to help with the dusting, the sweeping, the mopping, the silver polishing, and the laundry folding. Bruce hadn’t so much as whispered a word through the whole of the afternoon.

Damian, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to _stop_ talking. Though normally comfortable with silence, he found himself prattling on through the length of their tasks. He hoped that some piece of information, some combination of words, some tantalizing detail, would be enough to unlock the gates that held back the boy’s voice.

Damian talked about the Manor, about Gotham, about the others in the family (though stern looks from Pennyworth kept him cruelly censored on the latter topic.) He talked about his training and his time with the League, while carefully avoiding the assassinative nature of said training. Young Bruce, still so close to his own parents’ death, was hardly likely to look favorably upon any knowledge that brought death to others, no matter how impressive the training or well-deserved the death.

The one other thing that Damian did not mention was Bruce’s work as Batman. It was not to be discussed aboveground, for one, but also, it did not seem like the sort of thing a normal ten-year-old boy would receive with equanimity. And, to Damian’s ongoing disappointment, Bruce did seem like a very ordinary child, other than his selective mutism.

It was almost a relief when chores were concluded and Pennyworth turned his attention to dinner preparations. No one was allowed to aid Pennyworth in dinner, not even Drake, who had passable skill in the culinary arts. Instead, the boys were shooed upstairs with orders to rest before dinner. But Damian did not want to rest. He wanted results.

“If you must rest,” Damian said in a low voice as they climbed the stairs, “rest in my room. I have homework to attend to, and Pennyworth would not like you to be alone.”

That was a lie. Not the homework—he did have coursework to complete—but Pennyworth had said no such thing. However, Damian was not above fibbing to accomplish a goal. Nor was he above drastic measures for a good cause.

Damian held his tongue as they reached his room and entered. As Bruce hovered in the doorway, once more taking in his surroundings, and then climbed up onto the bed. As Bruce lay down, curled on his side with one armed wrapped tightly around Damian’s pillow. (Pennyworth would have to wash the case later.) As Damian began to work on his class assignments, only a fraction of his attention on the fractions, the rest keyed onto the boy behind him.  


Only when he could hear the faint rhythm of breaths even out behind him did Damian set down his pencil.

“I am not unfamiliar with the symptoms you display,” he said. Damian’s voice was low, but meant to carry to the bed. “I myself have not borne such a loss, but I have done research into possible long-terms effects.”

Damian’s hand slid into his desk drawer as he continued speaking. “Pennyworth says you will resume speaking in six months’ time. Only, you won’t, because this version of you won’t still be here in six months.”

The thought of Father still cursed half a year from now threatened to overwhelm Damian with nausea, but he soldiered on. He turned, careful to keep one hand behind his back, and stood facing Bruce. The boy lay with his eyes closed, either asleep or dozing. His curls tumbled across his face and onto the pillow, tangling like dust bunnies swept from beneath a couch.

“I want to help,” Damian murmured. “I want you to be well. Pennyworth was too permissive, letting you wallow in your grief.”

He climbed up onto the bed, moving as gingerly as a cat sidling past a slumbering hound. The faint movement of the mattress combined with Damian’s voice was enough to pry open Bruce’s eyes, but yet again, he didn’t seem fully cognizant. His gaze was empty and dazed, like a daydreamer staring out a window. But it was enough. Damian, despite his firm conviction that he was helping, would have felt guilty doing this with Bruce unconscious and unaware.

“You need to move on,” Damian said firmly, then lifted the plastic-handled scissors in his hand to a lock of Bruce’s hair.

Once, last year, Titus had somehow unearthed a pack of gum. Instead of opening his powerful jaws and swallowing the entire container whole like a medically dangerous but average dog, he had instead chosen to sniff it from one end to the other, deposited copious amounts of drool, and then curled up with the soggy pack like it was his new favorite stuffed animal.

The ensuing mess had been considerable. Titus’s soft black fur had become entangled with the gloppy, hot pink strands of gum, which spread across his chest and maw and splattered down his front legs. It had taken literal hours of careful cleaning and coordination by Damian, Grayson, and Father together to free the dog. What Damian remembered most was the way his obedient hound had gone wild. Titus had hated having his fur cleaned and neither had he wanted to give up the remains of the gum pack. Though too well-behaved to bite, he had fought and wiggled like a fur-covered eel to try to break free. Damian had ended that day sweaty, exhausted, and considerably bruised.

Fighting Bruce reminded Damian a lot of that day, but worse.

The scissors snicked shut on a single curl, the dark lock falling to the pillow. That was all Damian was able to accomplish before Bruce exploded upward. Expecting some kind of protest, Damian reacted quickly, pivoting on one knee to throw his other leg over the boy and pin him to the mattress.

“I’m helping you,” Damian insisted through gritted teeth. “Your hair was not long when you were younger, nor is it long as you grow up. You are using it as a security blanket, a mechanism of grief. It needs to go. You _must_ move on.”

It was a great speech, a logical set of rationales. It all probably would have been more impressive if it weren’t delivered grunted amid a fevered wrestling match.

Damian held the clear advantage. Not only did he have the edge of surprise and had gotten atop Bruce, but also he had intensive hand-to-hand combat training. But he didn’t want to _hurt_ his miniaturized father, merely tidy his unruly mop of hair. And Bruce fought like he had gotten a face full of fear toxin. His small hands flailed wildly, fingers trying to claw at Damian’s arms. His mouth was open in a wide, gleaming snarl, but no sound emerged, just ragged, panting breaths.

“I’m not trying to hurt you!” Damian yelped as the other boy bucked and rolled beneath him. “Just let me help!” 

Worried one of them would accidentally be stabbed and bring down the wrath of Pennyworth, Damian dropped the scissors and rose up, working to restrain Bruce. The other boy jerked his knee upward. Damian howled. Taking advantage of his momentary weakness, Bruce grunted and heaved them both to the side.

They fell off the bed with a thud, and the breath whooshed from Damian’s lungs as Bruce landed atop him, bony knees driving straight into Damian’s abdomen. He pushed through the pain, grasping sideways for the scissors that had fallen off the bed with them.

Bruce scrambled off him, angling toward the door. No! If he reached Pennyworth, the operation was doomed! Damian lunged away from the scissors and snagged Bruce by the heel. Bruce fell hard, knees and hands smacking against the hardwood.

“ _St-op_!” Damian wheezed.

Bruce kicked back with his free foot, clipping Damian’s nose. Blood spurted forth like a pressurized garden hose. Damian growled and pulled hard on the foot he still held, yanking Bruce down and knocking his chin against the floor.

Damian would _not_ be bested. He would complete this mission. It was for Bruce’s own good. Why couldn’t he see that?

“Hold! Still!” Damian shouted as he clawed his way up Bruce’s legs. He had just grabbed a fistful of Bruce’s t-shirt to finish hauling himself up when—

“MASTER DAMIAN WAYNE.”

Uh-oh.

Both boys froze and then slowly turned their identical gazes up to meet the thunderous visage of Alfred Pennyworth. The servant’s thin mustache had flattened into a nearly flat line, and a blue vein throbbed at his temple. The last time Pennyworth had looked this visibly enraged, Father had attempted to patrol on a broken leg. While understandable (at least to Damian), Pennyworth had responded with such frigid acidity that every team member with a secondary residence had fled the premises for the entire week. Grayson had even taken Damian, Titus, and Alfred the cat back to Bludhaven with him.

Given the white rims ringing Bruce’s pupil, the other boy was also aware of just how screwed they were.

_Probably not both of us,_ Damian conceded bitterly.

His suspicions were confirmed as Pennyworth’s steely gaze zeroed in on him and him alone.

“To your feet,” the butler ordered, not a courteous “Master” to be breathed.

Damian was reluctant, but not stupid enough to delay. He scrambled off Bruce and stood. His shirt had come untucked and was liberally stained with blood from his nose. His hair was undoubtedly as wild as Drake’s, and he was breathing heavily despite his best efforts.

Bruce was slower to rise, almost sullen in his speed. Damian wouldn’t look at him, but he could see the boy’s shoulders trembling in his periphery. His stomach settled deep into his toes.

“Master Bruce, if you could kindly give us the room.” It was not a request, despite being gently spoken. Bruce disappeared out the door without a look back at either of them.

Pennyworth stared at Damian through a long, torturous silence. It was ridiculous, Damian fumed inwardly. He had been called before tyrants and assassins, and dressed down by some of the most powerful individuals on Earth. He was no stranger to punishment or censure. And yet he was more uncomfortable here, now, in front of a frail servant than he could recall being… perhaps ever. He fought the urge to stare down at his toes. A soldier did not hunker before a reprimand. He would bear it, as was his duty.

As Damian stood, waiting, Pennyworth crossed in front of him, bent, and picked up the scissors from the rug. Damian continued to stare straight ahead, but in the corner of his eye, he could see the butler turn the tool over thoughtfully.

“Have a seat.”

Damian did as he was told, hurrying to perch on the edge of the bed, fingertips tingling. He was surprised when Pennyworth sat next to him, scissors still in hand, but kept his gaze straight ahead.

“Out with it.”

Damian risked a glance over.

“You rarely act without reason. Like your father in that way. So, out with it. What did you hope to accomplish by accosting a frightened child in your bedroom with a weapon?”

Damian plucked the black curl from the pillowcase next to him and deposited it in Pennyworth’s hand. “He will not speak because he won’t move on. He has wallowed for two years. Surely that’s unhealthy.”

“So you thought a turn as the Barber of Fleet Street would cure him of his neuroses?” Pennyworth countered, voice as dry as parchment.

“He is stagnating!” Damian burst out. “He is in stasis. Grayson says—“ he paused, attempting to collect himself and the things he had heard. “Nothing in this house has changed since that night. Not when he was ten and not now. But it cannot be the fault of the Manor, because Father speaks _now_. But he has refused to cut his hair and is silent, yet later he cuts his hair and speaks. So instead of indulging his unhealthy attitudes, why not bypass six months of nonsense?”

Damian turned to face Pennyworth fully, mouth twisting with emotion. “I can fix him. I know I can.”

Pennyworth had looked down and was turning the lock of hair over and over in his palm. “It is not nonsense to grieve the loss of one’s entire family, Master Damian. Nor is it nonsense to allow time to heal.”

He lifted his hand, brushing away Damian’s protests before they could be made. “I often wondered if I should have taken a harder stance, been more insistent, done more. But one thing we cannot do is _force_ someone to heal. In attempting to mend, we will only cause deeper harm.”

Pennyworth’s silvery blue eyes regarded Damian with a gentleness that cut Damian deeper than any rage could. “Did you not think to ask why unshorn hair was important to him?”

Damian swallowed. “He would not have answered if I—“

“Master Bruce may have taken an unexpected vow of silence at this point in his life, but I am still fully vocal,” Pennyworth pointed out. “And if you had asked, I would have told you that in all his ten years, only one person had ever cut Master Bruce’s hair. She had a way of turning what could be a stressful time for a young child into a party. They would blast music and sing along and laugh, and if sometimes the cut was a little more ragged that normal, it was worth the dance she would do to Mr. Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl.’”

Damian felt like he might be sick all over his bedspread.

“Unfortunately,” Pennyworth continued, “Martha Wayne will not be cutting anyone’s hair where she is, rest her soul, and Master Bruce could not bear to let anyone else do it.”

A small, grim smile twisted the butler’s mouth as he confided, “I had tried taking him to my own barber six months after the funeral. Master Bruce caused a scene so hideous that, to this day, neither of us dare return, and Anton has been dead for nearly a decade.”

Damian said nothing. As anyone in the Manor could confirm, empathy was not his strongest suit, but he couldn’t help but, with this new information, imagine exactly what the boy had felt when he woke to find Damian looming over him with scissors.

“You were not wholly wrong.” Damian looked up in surprise, and Pennyworth gave him a small nod. “The hair was an emotional crutch. In time, he will realize that himself and remedy the situation. But, regardless of good intentions, we cannot force a man to walk upon a bone that has not fully mended without risking all the healing that has come before. And we cannot take away the autonomy of others, full stop. What you did was a gross violation of trust and boundaries.”

Despite himself, Damian shrank down, shoulders hunching under the full weight of what he had attempted to do. “I understand,” he mumbled. “Apologies, Pennyworth.”

“You require no forgiveness from me,” Pennyworth assured, “beyond the staining of a perfectly good floor rug. However, I’m trusting you to make amends with Master Bruce.”

Damian nodded. He must. He knew he must. He just wasn’t sure if it were possible. Now that he thought about it, if anyone had done to him what he had tried to do, he might have initiated an eternal blood feud. And given the longevity on his mother’s side of the family, “eternal” wouldn’t have been much of an exaggeration.

“Good.” Pennyworth rose from the bed with a quiet grunt, then bent to collect the rug. “Please do your best to keep the commotion to a dull roar.”

Damian’s lips twitched at that, and he nodded again. “Yes, Pennyworth.”

“Good lad.” The praise, though mild, was nearly as good as a hug from Grayson.

“Pennyworth?” Damian called when the butler reached the door. Pennyworth turned and looked back. “What if… what if he won’t accept my apology? What if I can’t fix this?”

Pennyworth let out a slow breath. “If watching this household has reinforced anything, it is that we are all responsible for our own actions, and only our own actions. You must take responsibility for your behavior and the consequences and do what you can to make amends. What Master Bruce chooses to do is his own responsibility.”

It was not as reassuring as Damian would have liked, but he nodded. Perhaps he couldn’t fix his father. He could not make the boy return to his appropriate age or utter a single syllable. But he could—he _would_ —mend what he had broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy MOLY. A month. Nearly a freaking month of me shaking a fist at this stupid chapter. I thought it wold never get finished. Bless you all for your patience. I'm not 100% sold on that ending but QUE SERA SERA TIME TO MOVE ALONG.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Half-measures were for the weak, the lazy, and the inept. If a thing was to be done, it must be done in a full-throated and perfect manner. That was how Damian had been raised. Discipline, devotion, perfection. It was what his mother and grandfather had demanded his entire life. Though he would deny it, it was often what Damian’s father required as well._

Half-measures were for the weak, the lazy, and the inept. If a thing was to be done, it must be done in a full-throated and perfect manner. That was how Damian had been raised. Discipline, devotion, perfection. It was what his mother and grandfather had demanded his entire life. Though he would deny it, it was often what Damian’s father required as well.

While Damian was well-versed in patient and subtle machinations, those small adjustments were temporary measures that supported bold strokes. He didn’t understand doing less than everything he possibly could. He didn’t believe in regret, had never been allowed the luxury of looking back. To look back was to show weakness. To slow was to stumble. He had been taught the power of contemplation, yes, but had been fortified against second guessing, sometimes violently so.

Which made apologies… difficult.

Damian knew the _how_ of apologizing, the different components to piece together and the order in which to string them. Apologizing was a skill he had reluctantly been forced to acquire since arriving in Gotham, and even when forced, he would do it well. But that only seemed possible if he didn’t actually care. If he didn’t care, then he could perform the steps with perfection unmarred by emotion. Connect the pieces, say the magic words, and you’re done.

Unfortunately, this was one of the times when he did, in fact, care.

After changing out of his bloodstained shirt, Damian had delayed in his room to give Bruce time to cool down and to plan his angle of… well, framing it as an “attack” seemed wrong after what had just transpired. Whatever it was, he hoped a little bit of space would remove some of the sting from the wound he had caused to the boy who was his father.

After the appropriate interlude, it had taken more time to find Bruce. Damian had checked the Manor from struts to cellar with no luck and had started to worry that the boy had either run away or somehow suffered further magical effects.

Only after a quiet tip from Pennyworth did Damian venture outside. He would have found the boy without the butler’s help. Eventually. But Damian had to admit that he appreciated the shortcut.

The lawn was peaceful. It was late in the day, and the sun had started to set. Thick, golden rays spread across the neatly trimmed grass in a slow-moving pool like poured honey. The air was cool but not yet cold, refreshed by the barest hint of a breeze, and lightly perfumed by the delicate little flowers Pennyworth maintained along the side of the house. They gave Drake allergies. Damian was fond of them.

Across the way, the boundaries of the property were delineated by a small forest of trees that separated the Wayne land from Drake’s old haunt. Damian had found much to occupy him in that forest, but right now, he was seeking one specific tree. He didn’t know which one, but figured he would know it when he saw it, as it would be the only one hosting a mute, ten-year-old boy with unkempt hair.

Damian crossed the grass and slipped into the stand of trees. He was careful to make no noise with his steps, concerned Bruce would hear the shuffle of feet or the crack of a branch and flee. Damian didn’t need long, just long enough to make his apology and do it properly. If only he could figure out what to say.

He didn’t have to walk long. Damian spotted the dirty white socks among the leaves first, then looked up until he spotted the bare feet dangling fifteen feet up. Even as he worried over what to say, Damian noted that the damage from the glass had healed so completely as to have never existed. Magic. What a trip.

Bruce sat on a branch as one might a swing or a bench. His hands were braced against the bark beneath him, and his feet swung in lazy circles over the pine needle floor. His head was bowed, his shoulders hunched. Even from below, Damian couldn’t see his face. That catastrophic mop of hair fell across Bruce’s forehead, shielding his eyes.

The hair he only let his mother cut, Damian remembered.

Damian fought not to crack his knuckles as he considered his approach. Forthrightness usually got the job done. Some people preferred pretty words and grand gestures, which Damian could do, but he didn’t think the boy who eschewed words entirely would appreciate pretty speeches.

Damian huffed a quiet sigh, then shoved one hand into his pocket and started forward. On a hunch, he lowered his gaze and shuffled his feet just enough that Bruce would be able to hear him coming now. Bruce wouldn’t be able to leave without him knowing, but Damian didn’t want him to feel like he was being pounced upon. Again.

He made it to the base of the tree without any movement from Bruce. Damian could feel the boy’s gaze, but Bruce must have felt safe and out of reach up in the tree. Damian stood there for a moment, his gaze unfocused on the tree’s trunk. Then he turned on the ball of his foot, sat in the dirt at the tree’s base, and leaned back against its bark.

The forest was quiet. Leaves and needles rustled in the breeze like hushed whispers in a concert hall. Birds trilled all around, calling greetings and insults. Among the stillness, Damian breathed. He closed his eyes, rested his head against the trunk of the tree, and waited. The silence stretched, then cooled like glass poured into a pane. Into the hush, he spoke.

“I’m sorry.” The words tasted sour, like milk long past its due date, both because Damian hated apologizing and because he knew how very inadequate any apology was.

Above him, Bruce made no sound.

“I betrayed your trust by acting against your will. Pennyworth told me why… why you do not wish to cut your hair, but even without that reason, I behaved abominably by taking away your ability to refuse.” Damian _hated_ apologizing. He felt stupid, and hearing his crimes listed aloud only made him feel worse. He wanted Grayson. He wanted to hear that all was not broken beyond repair. He wanted Father.

Damian hunched forward and hugged his knees. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

Without looking at the tree, he held aloft the pen and notepad he had brought from the house so Bruce could see.

“I brought this in case you wanted to yell at me.” Damian tossed the tools over his shoulder into the tree where he knew Bruce was. They didn’t come tumbling back down, so the boy must have caught them. That was a start.

Damian sighed. He had no expectation of reconciliation. Bruce had had no reason to trust him before, much less now. He wouldn’t be able to fix or befriend the broken little boy, which was a consequence he would have to live with. Sooner or later, the wizard’s spell would slip a little more, Bruce would age again, and Damian’s chance would be lost, but all would be forgotten. 

There was a noise above him, and then something white fluttered down into his lap. Damian picked up the piece of paper, heart thudding in his chest with a sharp, percussive beat, and opened it.

**Am I really your father or did you lie?**

He could remain calm. He could. Damian decided he wouldn’t look up. He wouldn’t risk scaring Bruce back into his shell. Clearing his throat, he tried to pitch his voice into an approximation of the tone Grayson would use post-spat.

“You are my father,” Damian confirmed. “Or, you will be, when you’re older. Pennyworth can confirm for you.” _If you don’t trust me to tell the truth._

Silence again, then the quiet rip of paper before another sheet fell onto Damian’s head.

**Where’s m** was scribbled out and replaced with **Where’s your mom?**

Ah, perfect. A question he didn’t want to answer. Damian had deliberately excised all mention of his mother from his earlier chore session information vomit.

“She lives abroad.” The heartstring in Damian’s chest thrummed. It was silent more often than not these days, but when he thought of his mother and how long it had been since he had seen her, the ache plucked at the string, sending it vibrating across the ocean.

“She…” Damian wet his lips and considered what to say. “You were never married. You say you didn’t even know I existed. She left me here with you a year ago.”

And she’d never come back. Damian still could just barely remember the scent of her perfume, but he was losing the sound of her voice. He scowled against the throbbing ache in his chest.

_She clearly doesn’t miss you. She may not even think of you. You have family here now. You don’t need her._ But with Father gone, however temporarily, did that mean he was orphaned once more?

Soft rustling descended from the tree above, and then a third piece of paper fell at Damian’s feet. The skin between his shoulder blades prickled, warning him that Bruce had descended to the lowest branches and was watching intently. Damian released the hold on his knees to pick up the note.

**Am I a good father?**

Damian’s thoughts ground to a halt, then quickly resumed whirring at an even faster clip. He thought of the chilly, distrusting reception he had received when first arriving at the Manor and of his reoccurring uncertainty that he was anything more than tolerated. He thought of unspoken expectations, of the heavy silences and long absences. He weighed Grayson’s return for Tuesday dinners, Todd’s glass memorial, Drake’s former home just beyond the trees, and Cain’s dance recitals. He remembered an awkward pat to the shoulder, late-night sparring matches in the Cave, and lips pressed to his fevered forehead.

“Yes,” Damian whispered around an unwelcome lump in his throat, “the best.” _So then why aren’t you here now?_

There was no answer to his unspoken question except for the distant trilling of the birds and the whisper of the breeze. Then a thin, ungainly body clambered down the trunk and sat in the dirt next to him. Damian lifted his head and two familiar blue eyes stared back, set into a face that was too thin, too pale, but otherwise eerily similar to his own.

They stared at each other for several steady heartbeats. Then the other boy looked away to scribble a word on his notepad.

**Sorry**

Damian shook his head. “You have done nothing wrong. It’s not your fault you, I mean that he’s… isn’t…” He blew out a frustrated breath and thought he saw the faintest suggestion of a smile on those pale lips.

“It is strange to think of you as Father,” Damian admitted. “I thought you were, but you’re not yet, are you.” Trying to make the boy fit into the mold of the man he would become only made Damian feel lonelier, and he didn’t want to do it anymore.

A crease had appeared between the boy’s brows, a thin line of uncertainty as he chewed roughly on his bottom lip. For the briefest of moments, that stubborn hope that Bruce would speak flowered anew inside Damian. Then the boy bent his head and scribbled out one more question on his notepad before holding it up for Damian to read.

**Did they ever catch him?**

Damian stared at the words. Bruce stared at him and waited.

Damian made a decision. He pushed himself to his feet and wiped the dirt from his seat. 

“Come along, Wayne,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

The two boys left the wood as the sun settled deeper into the horizon. The bird calls had begun to subside, fading away into owl hoots and nightingale trills. Grayson would likely return soon and Drake would reappear from wherever he had stashed himself just in time for dinner. There would be just long enough for Damian to do what was needed.

Damian led Bruce across the lawn and through the Manor’s back door. They didn’t cross paths with Pennyworth, and Damian was careful to shoo off Titus before Bruce could see the big dog.

He was pleased that Bruce was willing to follow him without question, even after the day’s events. Even as he led Bruce into the den and nudged the hand’s on the grandfather clock. Even as they stepped into a dark, cavernous place beneath the boy’s home that he hadn’t known existed.

“This is the Bat Cave,” Damian explained in a reverent whisper. He flicked on the lights, waiting as the space filled one at a time with the quiet hum of the overheads, and Bruce’s eyes widened. 

Together, they walked down the steps to the floor of the Cave. Damian pointed out the computer with all their case files, the massive penny, the dinosaur skeleton, the archives.

Bruce stopped before the glass case that held his older self’s original suit and cowl, made before dozens of redesigns and improvements rendered the tech obsolete. His head was tilted back so he could stare up into the empty lenses of the cowl, the crease from before carving through his forehead again.

“You made this,” Damian explained. “When you grow up, you find the man who killed your parents.” He nodded when Bruce’s gaze jerked around to meet his. “And you stop other children from losing their parents. You protect Gotham. You’re a hero.”

Bruce stared at him a moment longer, then turned his attention back to the looming black suit as his teeth dug deep into his bottom lip. He had worn that lip bloody, but there was something less anxious in the tic now, something more contemplative.

“Young sirs?” Both boys startled as Pennyworth’s voice carried from the top step. “Dinner is served.”

* * *

The rest of the evening, to Damian’s surprise, was acceptable. Dinner was a quiet affair. Grayson had yet to return, Cain was absent, and Drake apparently had “urgent business.” (An excuse, Damian noted, that never would have excused _him_ from the required family dinner.)

Still, he wasn’t complaining. Not too much, anyways. Damian liked having Bruce to himself, especially now that he found it easier to think of him as Wayne than as Father. It wasn’t that they chatted the entire dinner—far from it—but Damian felt more comfortable with the long silences. With the notepad in Bruce’s back pocket, he knew that if the boy wanted to know something, he would ask.

Grayson finally returned late that evening. Pennyworth must have warned him about the damage, because Grayson didn’t blink at the deepening bruise on Damian’s nose or the scrape on Bruce’s chin. After greeting Bruce from the doorway of the den and indulging in a few seconds of small talk, he gestured Damian over.

“Do not move my pieces,” Damian warned, pointing to the checker board as he rose. “I will know.”

Bruce, of course, didn’t answer, but he did roll his eyes.

Grayson stepped back into the hallway and Damian followed.

“Everything going okay?” Grayson asked.

“You have been gone for hours,” Damian hissed. “Where have you been? Did you locate the wizard?”

Grayson shook his head. “Wasn’t looking for him.”

“Todd,” Damian guessed with a low growl.

“Cass,” Grayson corrected. He tapped his finger on the tip of Damian’s nose. Damian scowled and smacked his hand away. “We have a kid that won’t speak and another that can read body language. I figured she’d be useful.”

Damian’s scowl deepened. It was well-reasoned. He should have thought of it first.

“Well?” Damian goaded when Cain failed to materialize from the shadows. “Where is she?”

“Out. She has a case of her own she’s been working on. She’ll be back later.”

“But—“

Grayson cut his protest short. “We can’t neglect Gotham, Dames. For all we know, that’s what this guy wants, for us to be so busy fixing Bruce that we drop everything else. I found Cass, she knows we need her, and she’ll drop by when she can. Besides, it seems like you’re doing alright with him now.”

There was no censure in his tone, but Damian flushed a little anyways. “I am trying.”

“I know you are, and you’re doing great.” Grayson squatted down, his hands braced on Damian’s shoulders so they could look each other in the eye. “What you’re doing here is important, Little D. I’m trusting you to keep B safe, and to make sure he _feels_ safe. Can you do that for me?”

Damian began to nod, but then stopped and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. The penny dropped.

“You’re taking me off patrol!” Aghast, he pushed Grayson away and stepped back.

“Dam—“

“You can’t take me off patrol! You need everyone you can get out there. Are we or are we not a team? How da—“

“Damian,” Grayson interrupted. He used his cowl voice, and Damian’s teeth clicked shut.

Grayson’s expression softened but did not yield. “I need you here. Not because I don’t trust you or don’t value your work in the field. You know that. But this is a tactical decision.”

“What tactical decision?” Damian muttered mulishly. “I’ll bet you’re not making Drake stay home. I _know_ you’re not making Cain.”

“I’m not,” Grayson agreed, “but I wish I could. There is a sorcerer out there that can strip away years, Dames, and you don’t have that many years to lose. What if we find him and you get unwound?”

“What ifs are for fools,” Damian sneered. _What if_ was an excuse for inaction. No _what if_ could cover every unexpected outcome in their lives, so why even try?

“You could just as easily be lost, Grayson. Father was originally six years old. If you lose that many years, you would be unwritten.”

“You know how this sort of triage works,” Grayson countered. “Of all of us, you’re the one in the most danger from this type of magic. I’d make you all stay home if I could. But Jason’s AWOL, I need Tim’s backup, and if Cass’s situation goes south, we’re all going to be in a lot more trouble than one sorcerer can bring. I can’t make them stay home, but I _can_ ask you to stay.”

He reached out, and Damian reluctantly let Grayson’s hand settle on his shoulder once more. “It’s not just about our new rogue. Bruce trusts you. Stick around until he’s asleep upstairs, then go down and get some research done. Tim’s been working on a trail, but maybe you can make some headway while we’re out.”

Grayson grinned and ruffled Damian’s hair. “You can stay on comms while you work and keep me company.”

“Grayson!” Damian jerked away and set about restructuring his hair.

Rather than showing even a hint of repentance, Grayson kept on grinning and waited expectantly.

Damian rolled his eyes. “Fine. But I will be allowed to stay up until you return.”

“Until I sign off,” Grayson countered.

“Until the car hits the driveway.”

“Only if your butt is in bed before I make it upstairs.” 

“Deal.”

Damian and Bruce were allowed to finish their game before bedtime preparations commenced. Though Damian thought it disgustingly early to get ready for bed, it seemed that restless nights were a lifelong friend of Bruce’s, and Pennyworth wanted him to get what rest he could. While Grayson scarfed down a late dinner, Damian lent Bruce some pajamas (paw print pajama bottoms with a matching wolf’s head shirt, one of his favorites) and Pennyworth procured a spare toothbrush and Hooper.

None of them, it seemed, were smart enough to foresee the problem until they were at the top of the stairs.

Bruce had led the way and was halfway down the hall before he realized Damian and Pennyworth weren’t following. He stopped and turned, forehead wrinkled quizzically.

“Where are you going?” Damian asked.

Bruce pointed down the hall, as if it were obvious. To his room, of course.

“Your room is this way.” Damian pointed in the opposite direction, to the closed door that marked Father’s quarters.

“Master Damian,” Pennyworth began quietly.

What was this? It was one thing not to remember the events of his adulthood, but how could Bruce not know his own room? Not just not remember, but vehemently deny it? Bruce was shaking his head violently and pointing back down the hall toward rooms that were absolutely not his own.

“Master Bruce.”

“No, Wayne,” Damian said firmly. He marched in the other direction and jabbed a finger at the correct door. “This is your room.”

Bruce marched in a similar manner in the exact opposite direction and instead pushed open… Grayson’s door? Curious, Damian hurried back down the hall, catching up with Pennyworth just as they both reached Bruce, who had stopped in Grayson’s doorway.

Damian looked from the familiar scene with its walls festooned with faded circus flyers, posters of pretty girls, and humorous memes, the neatly turned down blue bedspread, and the immaculately dusted shelves, to Bruce’s face. The boy’s eyes were blown wide, the blue irises ringed all the way around with white. Releasing his death grip on the doorknob, Bruce stepped into the room, thin shoulders rising and falling with each breath as he turned in a slow circle on the center rug.

“Master Bruce,” Pennyworth began again, his voice as gentle as if it were wearing the velvety gloves Damian had given him for Christmas. “You have not slept in this room for many years now.”

Bruce whirled to face him, eyes blazing with accusation.

“It was your decision. You were grown. You thought it time to make a change.”

Bruce stared at the old butler, uncomprehending, then gasped and charged toward them. Damian stepped back, arms at the ready. If Bruce attacked them, he would defend himself, though he would soften his blows as much as possible. But the caution was unneeded. Bruce blew by, sprinting full tilt down the hallway to the room Damian had pointed out as his true room.

“Master Bruce!”

Damian wasn’t sure what was happening, but Pennyworth was striding down the hall now, as close to running as Damian had ever seen him. Whatever was going on couldn’t be good.

Bruce’s hand turned the knob even as his shoulder hit the door. It flew open and hit the interior wall with a bang. Even from a distance, Bruce could see the color drain from Bruce’s face.

“Oh dear Lord in Heaven,” Pennyworth breathed.

“What is it?” Damian demanded. Bruce had entered the room, but Damian and the butler were close behind. Damian looked from the boy to Pennyworth and back. “What is it? What’s going on?”

He was ignored as Pennyworth took a step toward Bruce, one hand outstretched. “Master Bruce.”

Bruce stood next to his bed, one hand white-fisted in the bedspread, mouth agape and lips moving around the gasping breaths of full-blown hyperventilation. His face was ghostly white except for two bright spots of color on his cheeks, but as Damian watched, a slow flush of color began to climb up his neck. It was like watching someone drown in an invisible fishbowl.

No. Wait. There was noise now. Not words, but the incrementally crescendoing _uh uh UH_ of a building sob.

Pennyworth breathed a word that, while not technically worthy of the swear jar, was close enough to one for him that Damian shot him a startled look.

Bruce screamed.

It was not the scream from that afternoon. That had been tight with fear and pain, a clear cry of distress ripped from a barely conscious throat.

This scream was none of those things. This scream started low, a vicious, grating noise that made Damian’s own throat ache in sympathy, then quickly scaled upwards until it sharpened into a point that stabbed at the ear. This scream was rage incarnate, its force quickly spreading the two spots of red in Bruce’s cheeks to his entire face. Fat, glistening tears—the first Damian had seen from this Bruce—spilled from tightly shut eyes as he screamed and screamed and screamed.

There were thundering footsteps behind them, and then Grayson was in the doorway, chest heaving. “Is it happening again? Is he aging?”

“Damian, pillows!” Pennyworth ordered as he hurried forward.

Damian didn’t understand, but he hurried forward as well, vaulting up onto the bed and gathering the pillows into his arms.

“Master Bruce, you must breathe,” Pennyworth coached as he reached the still screaming boy. “Breathe, breathe with me now.”

Still standing on the bed, Damian watched in horror as Bruce hurled himself to the floor and began beating his head against the hardwood.

“Richard!” Pennyworth snapped, and Grayson was there. He gathered Bruce up and wrapped arms and legs about the boy, pinning him like a living straightjacket.

“Pillows!” At Pennyworth’s crisp order, Damian jolted from his daze and threw the pillow to the floor around Grayson and Bruce. Pennyworth knelt, arranging the silk-clad bundles tightly around the duo with a suspicious efficiency.

In Grayson’s arms, Bruce thrashed, bucking and screaming like a boy possessed. A line of drool crawled from the corner of his mouth down Grayson’s bicep, mixing with the tears that continued to flow. His fingers clawed first for his own face, then at Grayson’s arms as the man continued to hold him tight.

Grayson was murmuring something Damian couldn’t catch over the cacophony. His lips moved, stopping briefly as Bruce drove the back of his head against Grayson’s chest again and again.

Damian didn’t know what to do. He stood aside helplessly, only able to watch as Pennyworth cupped the back of Bruce’s head to protect his skull and Grayson’s chest, both men now speaking in low tones to Bruce as the boy continued to writhe and batter himself against their hold. 

Objectively, the episode likely only lasted a handful of minutes, but it felt like it went on forever. In the end, it seemed exhaustion, rather than reason, was what brought the fit to its conclusion. Bruce lay boneless in Grayson’s arms, face turned into the man’s sleeve and hands grasping Pennyworth’s as he wept softly.

Damian took a step back. Then another. Then more, one at a time, until he was in the hallway and could turn and run. He fled only as far as the bannister, the fear that he would be needed keeping him on a short leash.

But needed for what? He couldn’t do anything. He hadn’t been able to help. He’d just stood there like an _idiot_ while Father–

Damian shuddered and closed his eyes as he clung to the carved lacquer baluster. It had been like watching a member of the team get dosed with fear gas, but fear gas made sense, in its own way. Fear gas was to be expected. Fear gas could be _fought_. What he had just seen had been unpredictable, senseless, and wild. He didn’t understand it, and it frightened him.

“Damian?”

Damian twisted around, hands still gripping the spindles of the upper railing. “Where is he?” he demanded when he saw Grayson. “How could you leave him?”

“He’s fine,” Grayson assured Damian. Then he grimaced at his own words, and Damian noticed wet smears all across his shirt. “Well, maybe not fine, but he’s safe. Too exhausted to try much of anything right now. I gave him to Alfred so I could check on you.”

Damian turned back around and looked through the railing to the hall below. “I’m fine,” he said, refusing to make eye contact as Grayson lowered himself to sit beside him.

“Well, I’m not,” Grayson admitted. Damian nearly looked over in surprise, but held himself firm. “That was absolutely terrifying in a day full of terrifying things, and I never want to have to do that ever again.”

He sighed, a deep, tired noise that sounded wrong. He hadn’t sighed like that in some time. Not since Father’s return from the dead.

“What happened, Richard?” Damian whispered. “Why did he do that?”

He felt Grayson shift next to him, leaning until his shoulder was pressed against Damian’s. Damian leaned as well, and Grayson gathered him into a hug, one arm wrapped comfortingly around his chest. It was, Damian realized with a sickening twist to his gut, a little similar to the way Grayson had held Bruce only a few moments prior.

“Alfred didn’t give me the full details.” Grayson sighed again and rested his chin atop Damian’s head. “Bruce is wiped out, but he’s still conscious, so Alfred was trying to be discreet. From what I gather, after B stopped talking, he started to have these… episodes. He’d get all worked up, sometimes over big things, sometimes over nothing at all, and he’d just start screaming. Alfred said it was the only noise he ever heard him make during those months. I guess for the smaller ones, he’d just scream and cry until he wore himself out, but this was one of the bad ones.”

“You mean he did this all the time?” Damian asked, aghast.

“Not constantly, but… enough times that Alfred could tell what was coming.”

The pillows. Damian felt his stomach twist again, and he pressed his nose against Grayson’s forearm. He smelled of body soap and clean skin, a familiar and welcome comfort.

“I should’ve thought,” Grayson said, his voice thick with regret. “Bruce told me when I first moved in that he put me in his old room.”

“That’s why he thought…” Damian trailed off. “But whose…” Burgeoning horror swelled in his chest. “His parents?”

Grayson’s chin rubbed against his scalp as he nodded. “He moved into their room after training with the League.”

So not only had Bruce been faced with the loss of his own, familiar room, but he had been struck by the desecration of his parents’ room as well.

“Yeah,” Grayson agreed quietly, feeling Damian’s shudder.

They sat together in silence, each absorbing the horror of what had just happened. Then Grayson murmured, “We should head back in there and check on Bruce and Alf. But only once you’re okay.”

“I am… unsettled, but otherwise fine,” Damian assured him.

“Great. Then I can crawl into _your_ bed when I have nightmares tonight.”

* * *

The sleeping arrangements had to be reconsidered. Despite being drained to near catatonia after his meltdown, Bruce refused to sleep in either his old room or his new room, and none had the heart to force the issue. Nor, it seemed, was he brave enough to fall asleep on his own.

Damian, to everyone’s surprise, including his own, offered to sit with the boy until he fell asleep. He didn’t consider himself the most reassuring presence, but it was a relief to be able to help even a little after his failure earlier, and he didn’t think it would take more than a few minutes for the exhausted boy to drift off.

Of course, he was wrong.

The minutes ticked by as Bruce stared up at the guest bedroom ceiling, his features outlined by the glow of the nearby nightlight. Damian sat curled in a comfortable armchair next to the bed and would glance over from his phone every few minutes. Bruce continued to stare blankly upward, his chest stuttering beneath the blankets, fingers picking at each other until the tips broke and bled.

Damian recognized the pattern.

“Wayne,” he whispered into the gloom. “May I help you?”

Bruce turned his head to look at Damian, the shadows smudged deep under his eyes.

“You’re anxious,” Damian said, keeping his voice low and soothing, as if talking to an injured animal. “You want to go to sleep, but you can’t get your brain to slow down. Your heart feels like it’s going to punch its way out of your chest. And you’re scared to close your eyes, because you don’t know what you’ll see, and you don’t want to open your eyes to an empty room when I’m gone. Right?”

He held his breath until Bruce nodded.

“I can’t fix why you feel that way, but I can make some of it go away enough so you can sleep. Will you let me try?”

When Bruce nodded again, Damian rose from the chair. “I’ll be right back.” Bruce’s eyes widened, and Damian held up a hand. “Two seconds. I promise. I just need to get someone, okay?”

It wasn’t two seconds, but Damian soon returned, his hand tangled firmly in the leather collar around Titus’s neck.

“Wayne,” Damian began, but Bruce was already sitting up in bed, his back pressed against the headboard.

Titus stood next to Damian, ears alert and tail wagging slowly. He had not charged, for which Damian was grateful. Titus was well-trained, except when he chose not to be, and he was still large enough to pull Damian off his feet. They stared at each other, two boys and a hound.

_At least it has gone better than our last meeting._

“Wayne, this is Titus.” Titus’s ears swiveled at the sound of his name, but his attention remained on Bruce. “He’s my dog, and he only bites people I tell him to.”

He took a step toward the bed with Titus, and Bruce whimpered. Damian froze. Maybe this was a bad idea. He didn’t want this to be like the haircut. He didn’t want to force Bruce to do anything, even if he thought a fear of dogs was ludicrous. But he genuinely believed Titus would be able to help.

Turning to the dog, Damian gave a hand signal, telling him to stay. Titus sat, and Damian released his collar and went to Bruce.

“Titus is a Great Dane. As a breed, they are known for their strength and their gentleness.” Damian looked back at the dog, a rare smile lifting his lips. “Titus would sooner lick someone to death than anything, but he will defend me—and you—with his life. He is loyal and brave and true. If I leave him here with you, he will protect you to his last breath.”

Damian looked down at the frightened boy in the bed. “I can send him away, but will you at least meet him? Please?”

He had hoped and yet still been surprised when Bruce gave a tiny nod.

“Titus, come,” Damian commanded. The dog seemed to understand that now was not the time for boisterous greetings. He padded forward, claws clicking against the hardwood, and stopped next to Damian. Titus’s soft, peaked ears swiveled curiously as he studied Bruce.

“Hold out your hand.”

At Damian’s murmured instruction, Bruce cautiously extended one hand, then flinched back as Titus’s neck stretched forward to meet him.

“He wants to sniff your hand,” Damian explained. “It’s like saying hello. He wants to know what you smell like, as that tells him far more than what you look like. I promise he won’t bite.”

Bruce looked doubtful, but he reached out once more, and Damian helped him uncurl his fingers until his hand lay flat. Once again, Titus leaned in, velvety nose whuffling against Bruce’s palm. Damian held his breath.

Bruce giggled. It was a soft, breathy, almost inaudible noise, but Damian caught it, and he felt the same joy he had felt when he had first scooped Alfred the kitten into his arms. It felt like being trusted with something fragile, and delicate, and utterly soft after a lifetime of breaking things.

Some of the tension uncurled in his chest. This could work. This could actually work.

It took some time, but it _did_ work. Once Titus had thoroughly sniffed Bruce’s hand and the boy was convinced that the dog was not a demon hound come to unhinge its jaw and swallow him whole, Damian called Titus up onto the bed. It was technically against Pennyworth’s rules to allow animals on the guest beds, but Damian thought circumstances allowed for a temporary adjustment.

Titus turned thrice atop the comforter, giant paws placed mincingly to avoid trampling the little boy next to him. Then he descended, giant bones collapsing down until he could curl up neatly against Bruce’s side and rest his monstrous head atop the boy’s chest. Titus breathed out one last contented sigh, beat his tail twice upon the bed, and closed his eyes.

“He will stay with you tonight,” Damian promised in a whisper. Bruce, who had tentatively placed one hand atop Titus’s head, looked over. “I will stay until you sleep, but should you need me, do this.”

Damian made a fist and threw it out, then looked to make sure Bruce had seen. “Titus knows the signal for each of us. Make that motion, and he will fetch me.” Damian made the same move, but this time with two fingers pressed together and pointing outward. “That will summon Pennyworth. You needn’t say our names. Just give the signal, and Titus will deliver.”

Bruce craned his neck and looked at the dog thoughtfully. Then he nodded before letting out a soft sigh of his own and closing his eyes. He was asleep within minutes.

Damian rose without a sound and crossed to open the door. On the bed, Titus opened his eyes, but his head remained on Bruce’s chest, a comforting weight to keep the boy grounded and warm.

“Good boy,” Damian whispered, then stepped out into the hall and shut the door. It was time to get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is weird. This chapter somehow ended up longer than normal AND it didn't take me a month to finish! Whee! Still not 100% satisfied with it, but hopefully it hits the right buttons for you all. I'm going to be diving into the BatFam Christmas Stocking exchange on Tumblr this holiday season, so I wanted to get this out before I started splitting my focus. (And heyyyy, if you join, maybe I'll end up writing one of your prompts FOR YOU!)
> 
> But never fear! I will return to the continuing adventures of Teeny Bruce and His Baffled Children!
> 
> And lastly, hat tip to @wolflovemew on Tumblr for confirming the canon detail of Bruce's round of musical chairs with his bedroom situation.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They took her dad._
> 
> _The truth clawed through Cassandra’s veins like a nest of scorpions, legs frenetically skittering and tails stinging every time the realization hit her again. It was nearly enough to make her shift her weight when she was supposed to be still. ___

They took her dad.

The truth clawed through Cassandra’s veins like a nest of scorpions, legs frenetically skittering and tails stinging every time the realization hit her again. It was nearly enough to make her shift her weight when she was supposed to be still.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, being fidgety. Cass was accustomed to finding serenity in stillness. To be motionless was to contain the potential of all possible futures in one’s body. To move was to commit, to narrow all choices down to one path in a burst of action. She observed better when she was still both in mind and in body. Cass’s ability to still herself would have made her an excellent assassin. Instead, it was what made her a superlative spy and vigilante.

And she’d lost that ability on a rooftop in a fog of radioactive green.

Cass drew in a long, steadying breath through her nose, then forced it out between her lips. The mask stifled the air. She wanted to stifle the men in the room below, if it meant hurrying up the proceedings.

They were talking in low voices, as if worried about ears in the walls. A correct worry, as it turned out, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been shouting. Their words would have meant nothing, and their bodies were already screaming.

Lean, _intimidation_. Shift, _distrust_. Weight on toes, _unease_.

The partnership was falling apart. Surprising for a team that had seemed unshakeable only a week ago. Then again, that was before Cass had started sabotaging their shipments. Redirecting orders. Planting the seeds of their downfall.

Now all she had to do was get them and the evidence of their crimes into the hands of the GCPD. Then maybe she could go home.

The men were leaving, still arguing as they shut the door and continued down the hall. Cass listened until the echoes faded and all that was left was the mechanical whir of the refrigerator in the corner. She unfurled herself from the dormant air conditioning shaft and dropped silently to the floor of the office.

The papers were on the desk. They were getting sloppier. Cass ran her hands along the documents, fanning them out so each was visible on the scarred wood. She wasn’t sure what they said—her eyes snagged on numbers and individual letters more than full words and phrases—but she didn’t need to be sure. A few quick snaps with her tiny camera caught all she needed and would upload the images to the database back in the Cave. From there, they could go to the police and their leader with the bristly mustache.

Normally, cases this easy were a gift. Cass liked nothing better than being able to leave a neatly wrapped case in the hands of the authorities so she could skip off to whatever fun was brewing at the Manor. She liked the work. She loved the work. But she liked her life, too. Usually.

Cass scowled behind her mask. She could’ve used a hard case today. When she wasn’t focused, she saw that green beam slice through the night. She felt the way the hairs on her arms had stood up, flashing _warning warning warning_ like the hackles of a dog. She heard Bruce’s screams.

Footsteps echoed in the hall. Cass froze. She waited, eyeing the duct she had crawled out of, the shadowy niche behind the door, the nook under the desk. But the footsteps continued on, so she turned her attention from the desk to the waiting filing cabinet.

This, the flipping through each paper to photograph, wasn’t difficult enough, and it left her feeling frustrated. She’d spent the whole day frustrated, chasing one empty lead and then another.

When the glow had lit the sky the night before, Cass had been concerned, but not scared. Magic was not unfamiliar to her, and she knew the protocol. Retreat, count heads, watch for signs of trouble. Bruce’s screams had opened a hole in her stomach, but she’d known better than to go to him. Their rules weren’t only for order. Their rules made them safe. If she ran for cover, she could grab Robin by the arm and make sure he fled from danger instead of turning to help. If he followed her, then Nightwing’s attention wouldn’t be split in two. If he was focused, then Red Robin wouldn’t try to watch his back. And if they all ran, then Batman wouldn’t have to save them.

That was protocol. Do what you’re supposed to do so everyone else could do what they were supposed to do. So they ran. They ran all the way back to the Cave, expecting Red Hood and Batman to follow.

But no one came.

Bruce would have wanted them to stay in the Cave, so Cass had stayed instead of charging back out into the night like she ached to do. She had scaled up to the rafters of the drafty cavern and huddled in the shadows, her cape wrapped tightly around her body. Dick sometimes called her Dracula when she did this, but she couldn’t help it. Worry made her cold.

She had struggled to find her stillness, feeling each second that slipped away tap against her consciousness like a fingernail against glass. Stay just a little longer, she had told herself. Give Bruce time. But it was hard to wait when every breath Dick took hummed with repressed panic.

Finally, Oracle had called, had said she found them. Cassandra had felt foolish for thinking there was anywhere Bruce could be that Oracle and her dancing fingers could not find. She was a spider, like the tiny grey spider Cassandra protected from Alfred’s ruthlessness in the corner of her window, only Oracle’s web covered the entire city. Maybe the entire world.

Dick had left to fetch their wayward family, but not before ordering the remainder to bed. They had gone, but Cass had not slept. Instead, she had waited, keeping her spider company until she heard voices in the hall.

She had found Dick and Alfred striding toward the stairs. She had slipped out of her room and stepped into their path, bare toes curling into the plush carpet runner.

“Cass. You should be in bed.” Dick had looked tired. Alfred had looked—

The muscles in Cass’s legs had tensed, tightening in her calves and behind her knees, edging her toward a crouch. To a stranger, Alfred might have looked weary as well, but otherwise composed. But a stranger did not know Alfred. Did not know how a single hair out of place, a single crease in an otherwise crisply pressed collar, was a symbol akin to… to… Cass’s brain had sputtered, trying to come up with a similar visual of doom.

Because Alfred Pennyworth had looked almost _harried_.

**Where is Bruce?** she had signed, hands fluttering through the air like moths bashing against a window. **What has happened?**

“Bruce is asleep.” Dick had both spoke and signed the words, one faltering behind the other.

**What is wrong?**

“Apologies, Miss Cassandra,” Alfred had interrupted. Alfred _never_ interrupted, except for the worst emergencies. It wasn’t polite. “But we are operating under a deadline. Master Dick can explain to you our current circumstances, but we must keep moving."

Cass might not have understood each word, but she had gotten the gist. Walk and talk.

She had kept pace in her pajamas and bare feet as Dick explained the bare outline of what they knew. A magic spell or alien power. Jason asleep in a room down the hall. With a child Bruce.

A child Bruce. Cassandra had scarcely been able to wrap her mind around the concept as she dug through boxes under the swinging beam of the attic’s sole lightbulb. Even now, a day later, she was still having trouble.

But sure enough, the next morning a little boy with blue-black hair and shining eyes had come down to the kitchen, stubby little toes peeking out from beneath too-long blue-striped pajama pants.

She had known him by the shape of his face, familiar both from the structure of the fragile bones beneath porcelain skin and also from the frames that lined the Manor halls. He had stepped forward, one arm wrapped around a large blob of brown cloth, and had shaken her hand as Alfred introduced them. Cass had looked into his blue eyes still crusty with sleep. And she’d known.

He was not Bruce. They had taken her dad.

In the smugglers’ den, Cass did not slam the filing cabinet drawer. She never slammed anything, except when she wanted to make a point. She had been tempted, though.

Instead, she pulled out her phone and texted Tim an emoji of a flashing camera. He would get the alert when the document scans uploaded to the Batcomputer, but it felt right to give him an extra heads up.

One thing that felt right in a day that felt wrong, wrong, wrong.

Cass considered “accidentally” bumping into the trashcan, just to see if it would bring someone running. Maybe a fight would knock some of the bugs out from beneath her skin.

She did not. Her training held firm.

Cass made it out and across the street without incident and felt perilously close to a sulk.

Bruce, had he been there, would have watched her silently. She would have felt the weight of his regard as they sat shoulder to shoulder on the roof overlooking the smugglers’ warehouse. They wouldn’t have spoken, but he might have bumped her shoulder with his. They wouldn’t have spoken, but they wouldn’t have needed to, and she would have ended the night with a lighter heart than how she began.

Instead, Cass sat. And watched. And sulked.

And that’s how Dick found her.

“There you are,” he murmured as he came up behind her. They were a family of deliberate feet scuffers, and Cass had already tilted her chin to acknowledge Nightwing’s presence before he sat beside her.

“Been looking everywhere for you.” He didn’t bump her shoulder with his. “What have you been doing?”

Cass looked out across the street to the warehouse and let Nightwing’s gaze follow.

“Have a case?”

That didn’t need answering, so Cass didn’t.

“Black Bat.” His voice was warm, like sunshine or honey on toast. It was warm when she wanted cool, like fresh sheets or a summer swimming pool. “You left. Why?”

It was a direct question. There weren’t many of those in this family. More often, there were the subtleties, the unspoken and the sideways that slipped in, shrouded in words that didn’t mean what they were supposed to. Those Cass could pretend to miss. She often did. But this was a direct question, just shy of an order. Bruce would expect her to behave, to answer.

Bruce wasn’t here.

They took her dad.

Nightwing waited, and Cass was forced to relinquish her stillness and her secrets.

**I went to find the wizard.** Her signs were sharp, abrupt. Cass usually liked the sign for _wizard_. She liked pantomiming the long, pointy hat. But the sign was more of a snatching now. Her fingers snapped as she brought them together.

“No luck?”

Cass’s silence was her answer.

She’d searched for hours. Crept her way into every back room, coven cubby, magic circle, and occult gathering she knew of in Gotham. Her old ties meant she knew a fair share of them. And yet, for all her effort, she came up empty. Her failure was the jittery frustration that clawed at the underside of her skin and robbed her stillness. She needed to find that wizard.

“We need you back home.” Nightwing had lost his smile, but he was still speaking softly, as if she were a child to be managed.

**I’m busy,** Cass signed, keeping her gaze fixed pointedly on the lair across the street.

“Black B—“

**I’m _busy._** If her previous signs were sharp, these could cut glass.

The silence pooled between them, gathering like quicksand. Cass could feel her toes at the edge. Then Nightwing threw her a rope.

“B needs your help.”

Cass’s gaze didn’t leave her target, but she tilted her chin toward her brother. She listened as he described Bruce’s sudden transformation from a bright-eyed six-year-old to a silent ten-year-old.

“I have to get back,” Nightwing said once he was finished. “I left him with Robin. You need to come with me. To help. You’re maybe the only one who can tell us what he needs.”

Cass examined her options, knowing full well what she would choose but taking the time anyways, because of who was asking and why.

**I’m busy,** she signed at last, but her movements had lost their edge. It was a soft refusal, not a snap.

“But B needs—“

**He is not Bruce.**

It said something, maybe, about his respect for her abilities that Nightwing took her literally. Even without looking at him, Cass could feel the shiver of shock run through his body.

“What? What do you mean he’s not—“

Cass huffed and gave up on watching the warehouse to face Nightwing.

**He is B-R-U-C-E, but he’s not _Bruce._** Cass finger-spelled Bruce’s name, then made his name sign. 

They took her dad. Not her father, the biological being who had brought her screaming into the world, but her _dad_. Her Bruce. The wizard, whoever they were, had taken her dad from her and replaced him with a wide-eyed child.

She’d known his bone structure, the face that watched her from frozen photo frames, but everything else had been wrong. Cass had known the moment she saw him. Everything that had made Bruce _Bruce_ had been wiped clean. He’d been tidied and straightened, from the lurking depths behind his eyes to the bump in his nose from repeated blows that she enjoyed running her finger over. It was all gone.

Cass had fled the Manor and spent the whole day trying to track down the monster that had stolen her dad. And when hours of fruitless searching found her with a knife to the throat of a fortune teller with nothing left to offer, Cass had retreated, falling back into the darkness that clung to Gotham’s corners.

She had felt useless. Worse than useless. She had felt alone.

Cass had never been Robin. She had never been an “and” with Bruce. And she was fine with that. She had been raised to independence and was too old to regress to a needy child. But Bruce had been her shadow, and she had been his. Large and looming. Small and sharp. At each other’s backs no matter what.

What good was a shadow without a source?

**I could not find the wizard. I cannot save Bruce. But I can be useful.** Cass willed Nightwing to understand, to see what she was trying to do.

**If I cannot save him, I can protect his city.** She gestured down at the warehouse. **These men are doing bad things. They will cause death and destruction and bring grief to Gotham. If I cannot fix what is wrong with Bruce, let me fix what is wrong with his city.**

Gotham might always be broken. It was an imperfect city filled with imperfect people, and it would always need Batman. But if Cass had done her job right, the leader of the boys down below would arrive tonight, driven from hiding by the cascade of failures down his supply chain. And when he appeared, she could pluck him from the ranks and deliver him and her evidence to the police. 

It wouldn’t help Bruce. But at least she wouldn’t be useless.

Nightwing stared down at the scene. He had fine lines at the corners of his mouth. Laugh lines, yes, but also marks of weariness and stress. He’d been the one to keep them all in hand the night before, when information had been scarce and worries high. He’d ruthlessly squashed his own fears to take care of Tim and Damian. And Cass. And here he was, chasing after her when Cass was sure he’d rather be with Bruce.

Cass looked away. Nightwing would order her home, and she would go. Her work would not be wasted, but it would be delayed, and untold numbers of people would be hurt in the meantime. Lost, while she talked to a boy who had her father’s eyes but not his soul.

“Can I help?”

Nightwing was looking down at her, the laugh lines a little deeper. He nodded down at the warehouse.

“When your man comes, it’ll be quite a fight. His boys won’t let him go easily. You could use some backup. Can I help?”

Behind her mask, Cass smiled.

* * *

In the end, she’d been glad for the help. Not that Cass needed the extra hand, but the company was welcome. It felt nice to have someone at her back.

When the fight was over and the trussed-up villain and digital bag of evidence had been delivered to the station, she and Nightwing had retreated back into the shadows. She had expected him to order her home now, but instead he had rested a hand on her shoulder.

“He would be proud of you,” Dick murmured. “Will be proud of you, once he’s back to normal.” He hesitated, then squeezed her shoulder before letting go. “Come back when you can.”

So Cass went on, alone, but no longer so lonely.

It was twilight now. She had spent the day in and out of costume, helping where she could. Most of the time, those she watched, those she helped, hadn’t even known she was there. Patrol would start in a few hours, and she would join her brothers and Oracle in guarding the city, standing in the gap that Batman left behind.

But first, she had one more task.

She went as herself, her costume and mask tucked away and traded for yoga pants and a hoodie that cast a deep shadow across her face. Though she didn’t plan on being seen, she didn’t want to make this call as Black Bat.

She found him in the stands of the old stadium. The Gotham Knights had moved the year before, trading their long-time home at Gotham City Stadium for the larger, shinier, flashier Magnum Diamond Stadium up the road. GCS was scheduled for a two-year demolition, a slow, steady decay that would turn a cherished municipal landmark into something depressing like a parking lot or an outlet mall.

Those were Bruce’s words. Cass didn’t care about baseball. She liked the hats and the funny chants and the smell of the wet grass, but the game itself meant little to her. 

Bruce, though. Bruce had faded photographs of that now-too-familiar little version of himself at a game with his parents, all smiling and tanned in their Knights gear. Bruce had an envelope tucked deep into one of his drawers, filled with ticket stubs from games stretching back decades. Bruce had a baseball on his dresser, framed in glass with a neatly printed card that read “Jason Peter Todd, shortstop, first home run, June 12th.”

Cass didn’t think Jason knew about the Little League baseball or the ticket stubs, just like she didn’t think he knew about her knowledge of his habits. Red Hood wasn’t an easy person to track, in or out of the helmet, but she’d followed him here enough times that she knew the place meant something to him, even if she wasn’t sure what. Before she could read that off him, he would have to answer that question for himself.

She could have—probably should have—returned to the Manor before patrol, but Dick hadn’t just told her about Bruce’s quick change. He had also told her about the argument he had had with Jason and the way the other man’s face had looked when Bruce had failed to recognize him.

Well, no, that wasn’t accurate. Dick wouldn’t open Jason up to others like that. He would guard his brother’s vulnerabilities like his own. But he had said enough that Cass could read the effects of Jason’s reaction on Dick’s body, like the tumultuous wake of a boat passing through the harbor.

Protecting Gotham wasn’t the only thing she could do for Bruce. Though he guarded it well, Cass’s dad had a big heart, and he loved more than the city alone.

She found his lost son high on the bleachers, legs sprawled among the metal ruins as he chucked pieces of concrete down onto the abandoned field. Cass liked studying Jason, particularly when he thought he was alone. The others thought him a cypher, incomprehensible with all his contradictions and violence. But Cass knew they were wrong.

Despite what everyone thought, Cass couldn’t read minds, only bodies. She read intention and emotion in the stutter of a breath, the angle of a spine, the flexing of a hand. Everyone thought they were more guarded than what they were, Jason included. In fact, she doubted he had any idea how easy he was to read, once you knew what to look for. She doubted he knew how much he looked like Bruce when he thought no one was looking.

Even without Dick’s insight, Cass couldn’t have missed the hurt rolling off Jason, spreading like blood before the nose of a shark. It was there in the way he sprawled among the bent bleacher seats, defeat disguised as casual disdain. It was there in the force of his arm, hauling back and letting the palm-sized chunks of concrete fly with a stinging bitterness. And it was there in the set of his mouth, the caustic twist of his lips that pinched tight as if holding back a curse or a sob.

And had Cass doubted herself, those doubts would have been waved away when Jason became aware of her presence. She wasn’t sure what had given her away, but she could spot it the moment he knew. Jason had a way of hardening his insides but masking it by loosening his outsides. His slump became more pronounced, more languidly defiant even as his hips angled to give his dangling hand cleaner access to his holster.

“Peeping birdies get shot,” he called, his rasping voice echoing off the metal and stone.

Cass stepped out of the shadows. She wasn’t a bird, wasn’t a Robin, and never had been. But it felt silly to correct that now.

She stood watching him, hands loosely slung through her hoodie pocket. When Jason’s glare drifted downward, she pulled them out to hang by her sides. Cass didn’t think he’d shoot her for no reason, but she also didn’t want to give him one.

“Well?” he demanded. “Did Mama Dickhead send you to spy on me?”

Cass shook her head and risked taking a step down. She paused. He didn’t shoot, so she took another and stopped again.

She knew some of Jason’s past. More than some might suspect, probably. She’d studied the photos carefully preserved in albums or tucked into wallets. She’d seen the newspaper clippings on the Batcomputer and the memorial in the Cave. She’d lived through some of the upheaval in Gotham after his return and seen its effect burned into Bruce. And she, apart from any of the others, was the only one who had watched Jason from afar, training deep within the labyrinthine structure of the League of Assassins.

But that didn’t mean she knew him. Much of Jason was still a mystery to Cass. He was like the estranged cousin that showed up to the once-a-decade family reunion to stir up drama. Not that she knew what that was like, either, but it happened a lot in Alfred’s daytime shows.

They knew each other enough to nod to. Enough to stay out of each other’s way. She scared him, and she knew it. He didn’t scare her, and she knew he knew that, too.

“Alfred?” Jason guessed, when Cass denied Dick’s hand in her appearance.

Alfred Pennyworth’s meddling was more welcome. Jason had guessed Dick first, because that was the sort of boundary crossing he’d come to expect from Bruce’s second in command, but if not him, who else would bother to care about his well-being? Only Alfred. They were an odd pairing, the refined manservant and the vicious drug lord, but Cass had seen more than once the sway the older man held over Jason. She didn’t really understand it, since Jason’s obedience seemed to spring from true trust and devotion rather than Cass’s more rational wariness, but to each their own.

She could see as much as feel the confusion ripple through him when she shook her head again.

Cass pushed back her hood. She didn’t need faces to read a person, but she’d noticed that seeing hers put others a little more at ease. She wondered, sometimes, what other people saw when they looked at her. When she wore her mask, she knew they saw only the gaping space and feared it, and that was fine. But when her face was bare and open to the world? What they saw was the only thing she couldn’t read.

Whatever Jason saw on hers made him snort and look away.

“I’m fine,” he growled.

In Cass’s experience, if you had to say it, it wasn’t true. Lucky she was in the habit of never saying anything. She crossed her arms instead.

“Seriously. Bug off. Tell whoever sent you to leave me alone.” Jason bent down and picked up another chunk of concrete, then sent it hurtling down, ricocheting off the steps below.

“I didn’t want to be involved anyways.” The words were low, so low Cass nearly missed them and had to struggle to piece together what they meant. She might not have tried, except his shoulders were screaming _lies lies lies lies_.

She’d gotten better at interrogations. Not just the grab-them-by-their-ankles-and-dangle-them-off-a-tall-building kind, but the subtle pressure kind. They weren’t her strength, but Cass had picked up some tips from Bruce and Alfred. She waited.

“I should’ve left him in the alley,” Jason muttered. “He’s your problem, not mine. I don’t even know why I…”

He dragged his fingernails down the soft hollow behind his ear, clawing the skin red.

“And after, I should’ve… should’ve just called and left him…”

Cass stared at him, letting her heartbeat count off one, two, letting the weight of her gaze run across his skin. Then Cass walked down the remaining steps until she was in his row. She sat on the concrete and rested her elbows on her knees to stare out across the stadium.

The grass was dead, the green giving way to brown, scraggly tufts amid dirt stained red by the setting sun. The clean white lines she liked so much had long since washed away. Trash rolled fitfully across the field with each breath of wind. But all was silent, the chaos of the city distant and remote, the only noise the far-off beeping of construction equipment and the lonely caw of a crow flying overhead.

She heard Jason sigh to her left, then another rock went flying.

“Did you know he kicks in his sleep?” Out of the corner of her eye, Cass watched Jason reach up and rub a spot on his side just below his ribs. “And he has dimples, right in the… in the corner…”

He wasn’t really talking to her anymore. That happened a lot, Cass found. People might start talking to her, but in the end, her presence was as useful as the little yellow duck Tim kept next to the Batcomputer. They talked because they knew she wouldn’t tell anyone what they said.

“It’d be better if he just stayed a kid. Freaking broken adult. Keep him a kid and maybe he’ll grow up into a human being this time.”

Cass should’ve known better than to underestimate Jason Todd. He was a street thug, a former Robin, a killer trained by the best in the League. And he was never as oblivious as he seemed to be.

His dry cackle echoed off the ruins around them. “So she does have buttons to push.”

Jason had caught the way she had stiffened, muscles betraying her by pulling tight as if bracing for a fight. It was just her luck he’d found the gap in her armor.

“What’s the matter, princess?” he taunted. “Can’t stand a little truth?”

It took her breath away sometimes how spiteful Jason could be. Not because the spite hurt her, but because she was never prepared for it. He reminded her of all the scruffy little animals Damian would drag home, yowling and spitting and swiping in their fear and pain.

But Jason wasn’t an animal. He was a person, and he needed to learn some control.

Cass stood and crossed the distance between her bench and Jason’s. She felt a spark of vindictive joy when he tensed at her approach, and the spark turned into a happy little roar when she leaned forward and he scrambled backward.

She took a breath and gathered her emotions and her words.

“I fix.” Cass kept her gaze hard and flat, an unreadable assassin’s face. She regretted stowing away her mask, but she would not give Jason Todd a toehold in her emotions. Not anger, not unease, not distress. “He is mine.”

She had once overheard Tim trying to explain something to Damian before exasperatedly declaring, “You get it, but you don’t _get it_ get it.” The doubling had confused her at the time, but now Cass felt she understood. She didn’t care whether Jason “got-got" her declaration, as long as he got enough of it to believe her and stay out of her way.

“He is _mine_ ,” Cass repeated, flattening each sound between her teeth until the edges were pressed out and she could spit them into Jason’s face. “I fix.”

She reached into her hoodie. Jason fumbled for his gun, then stopped when Cass pulled out a cheap burner phone and chucked it at his chest. “I call. You come.”

Not a request. A demand. She would find a way to fix what was wrong with Bruce, and if she needed Jason to help, he better come when she called. It wasn’t the meeting Cass had expected to have when she had first tracked Jason to the crumbling stadium, but she would worry about disappointing Bruce once she had him back.

Cass pinned Jason with one last dead-eyed look, then turned her back on him and started the hike back to the exit.

“He’ll abandon you, too,” Jason called after her. His voice echoed, doubling and tripling, then fading away into ghostly whispers. “You think he loves you, but just wait. He’ll leave. And you’ll be alone.”

Cass paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at him, insides bubbling sick with pity and disdain.

“He never leaves first,” she said, then disappeared into the tunnel dark.

Patrol would be starting shortly. The shadows had grown long and deep and would swallow the city soon. Cass would be in those shadows, she and her family, be they bird or bat or oracle.

They would protect Gotham. They would hunt the wizard. And when the night began to ease and curl in on itself like a blossom, she would go home. She would see to her dad, her Bruce, in whatever form he was in, and give him what care she could. She would stay with him, until he returned to her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOW. Even though the months between November and now have been filled with other fics, I feel awful for leaving this one for so long. Thank you all for being patient! In my defense, I have never, ever written from Cass's POV before, so this was a struuuuuuuggle. But I have done it!
> 
> Before I close out this note, I just want to mention that Cass's signs are meant to be read as translated text. ASL does its own thing separate from English, especially in terms of things like verbs and articles and such, so her parts aren't meant to be a word-for-word transcription of each sign. She is a clever girl, our Cass, and I hope I ddi her justice, even if her intelligence is expressed more in visual media than the written word.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Damian found himself smiling as he and Wayne skulked in the eaves, waiting for their latest trap to bear fruit. Hidden in the gloom, Wayne returned the smile—not with his mouth, still pressed into a somber line, but with his eyes. They were Father’s eyes, a deep, brilliant blue._

The morning dawned clean and bright, but Damian was not awake to enjoy it. He had followed his agreement with Grayson to the letter, staying up in the Cave until the Batmobile hit the driveway, then retreating to his room. He had tucked himself into bed, only somewhat missing Titus’s heavy warmth by his side, and then had waited for Grayson to come in and wish him goodnight before burrowing under the covers. And there, in the dark, he had opened his tablet and worked until his eyelids were gritty and his head pounding.

Still, he hadn’t meant to sleep in. There was much to do today, now that he and Wayne had made peace, and Damian didn’t want to miss a moment. Though his eyes felt gummy and raw, Damian sprang out of bed and hurried to dress. He had expected the normal commotion of the Manor at day, perhaps even more with the mystery of the missing wizard to be solved, but when he opened his bedroom door, he heard no one, despite the hour.

Damian suspected that he had not been the only one to stay up to gnaw at the problem at hand. Everyone, from Grayson down the ranks, seemed to still be asleep, as if felled by a spell from a storybook. An uncomfortable thought, seeing as there were real sorcerers lurking about.

The house was empty and still as Damian descended the stairs. In the kitchen sat the boy Wayne, a cereal bowl in front of him, still partially filled with milk and a few, soggy, floating bits of shredded wheat. Titus sat at his feet. When Damian came into view, the hound’s massive tail began to thump against the tile.

“Good morning, Titus. Wayne.” Damian inclined his head to each in turn. “Sleep well?”

That they were together seemed a sign of good fortune. Wayne’s nod and Titus’s emphatic thump only confirmed Damian’s suspicion.

“Good.” Damian looked around the empty kitchen. “Where is Pennyworth?”

Wayne had the notepad from yesterday by his elbow. At Damian’s question, he picked it up and scribbled a quick answer before holding it up for Damian to read.

**Shopping.**

Ah, yes. It was Pennyworth’s market day. Having an explanation for the butler’s absence eased some of the tension in Damian’s chest. A quiet house could be explained away, but a Pennyworth-less house was much harder to account for.

With that mystery solved, Damian fixed himself a bowl of Cheerios, then settled at the breakfast counter next to Wayne. They sat in companionable silence as Damian worked his way through the floating O’s.

“You can borrow Titus again tonight, should you need him,” Damian offered after a time.

Wayne leaned back to look down at the dog at his feet. He began to nod, then caught himself and looked up at Damian.

**Won’t you miss him?**

Damian shrugged. “I am… accustomed to his presence at night, but you need him more.” His lips quirked. “It is an unexpected sensation to be able to stretch fully in my own bed, I must admit.”

A body stood framed in the doorway. Both boys looked up. Cain was watching them, arms crossed and still clad in her pajamas. Damian hadn’t forgotten that Grayson had asked her to return after patrol, but he was still… not _displeased_ , per se. But not its opposite either. He knew Cain’s presence would be useful in unlocking Wayne, but Damian thought he was doing a good job himself, had Grayson bothered to notice.

Wayne and Cain eyed each other across the kitchen. The older girl had left the Manor before the boy’s most recent change, so this was technically their first meeting. Cain was usually more of a morning person, but now she stood squinting at the boys in the late morning sunlight, oversized Minnie Mouse sweatshirt askew on her shoulders and the hem of her matching pajama bottoms sweeping the tile.

As she tucked a bent strand of hand behind her ear, Damian fought not to squirm. Cain’s direct regard often put him on edge. It made him want to fight, to break some of the weight off. He didn’t mind the attention, exactly; rather, he worried she paid too much attention to the wrong things.

Right now, he was worried how she would get along with Wayne. Still, introductions must be made.

“Wayne, this is Cassandra Cain. She is your adopted daughter, formerly of the L—of lower Gotham.”

Once again, Damian found himself sidestepping the less palatable pieces of history floating around the mansion. He didn’t think he imagined Cain’s quick glance of gratitude.

Wayne’s lips twisted hesitantly, but he gave the girl a nod, which she returned before disappearing behind the counter. There was a box of Poptarts hidden beneath that only Cain could access. Damian had searched and still couldn’t figure out where she pulled them from.

Soon Cain was sitting on the counter across from them, a perch she enjoyed but could only take when Pennyworth was away. She nibbled at the s’mores breakfast pastries, dark eyes still trained on Wayne.

To Damian’s relief, they did not seem to be “hitting it off,” as the colloquialism went. He would never admit it, but when Grayson had said he would be bringing Cain back to help, Damian had been concerned that his role as Wayne’s guide would no longer be needed.

Cain had a relationship with Father that Damian didn’t fully understand, but that he envied deeply. They were bonded in a way that rivaled Grayson’s own ties with Father and that brought out a different version of both man and girl. Often, Damian would walk past Father’s office, hoping the man would look up and invite him in, only to see Cain on her stomach beneath the desk, contentedly flipping through the graphic novels she enjoyed while Father worked, both serene and comfortable in each other’s presence. Their ease with each other ate at Damian sometimes, a deep and bitter ache. But that bond, whatever it was, did not seem to have carried over to this younger version of Father.

Damian tried to decipher the expression on Cain’s face as she looked at Wayne. Wayne’s was easy enough—wariness, reserve, and a pinch of curiosity about this new stranger with the unflinching focus. But Cain was always more difficult to read. She had Father’s habit of smoothing out her features to protect her emotions. Worse, while Damian could use his own face as a way to read Father’s, Cain expressed herself differently even when open. He didn’t know how to read the minute tilt of her head, the tiny furrow in her brow, the slight downturn of her lips. Had it been anyone else, he might have said she looked… But this was Cain, and it was unwise to assume with her, so Damian stopped trying and focused on his cereal instead.

When Damian had finished his breakfast, he washed his and Wayne’s bowls, then announced, “Pennyworth will return soon. Wayne, unless you want a repeat of yesterday’s chores, I suggest you follow me.”

To his delight, the other boy immediately stood to his feet. Damian suppressed a smile and turned to give the girl a cordial nod. “Cain.” Then the two boys left.

He felt a little guilty for spiriting Wayne away, but Damian truly didn’t think Cain could help much more than he had already. They were communicating just fine by pen and by look. The real help would be in finding the wizard to lift the spell, and while Damian was still committed to that goal, he wasn’t as eager as before. He could spend his late nights combing for clues. His days would be spent with a friend.

Damian hovered at the entrance to the den, Wayne at his back. The gaming console waited, primed with the games he had planned to show the other boy, but now that they were here… Instead, Damian turned on heel to face the other boy.

“Wayne,” he said. “How familiar are you with the passageways?”

* * *

As it turned out, Bruce Wayne at age ten knew more of the hidden byways and corridors than even Damian, who before today would have sworn that he had done the most comprehensive survey of the Manor to date. They started with the most accessible portions of the house—the wide crawlspaces behind the walls, the little rooms behind certain closets. These were hardly secrets. Though empty and covered in a thin layer of dust, they were nonetheless not as dirty as a space should be after being abandoned for decades. They had not wholly avoided Pennyworth’s presence. Damian knew, too, that Grayson knew some of these spaces, as he had called Damian out of them in the early months when Damian had used them to pull secrets from the strange house and its even stranger occupants.

There were a few more Damian had found in later months, after intense searching. These included smaller crawlspaces, hidden niches, and several mirrors with two-way glass. He didn’t _think_ Grayson knew about those, though Pennyworth’s touch was still evident. But some of the other places Wayne showed him… The Manor was less the solid fortress Damian had known and more a beehive, honeycombed with secrets. There were tricks to this home that Damian had never even considered, and Wayne opened them to him like an oyster to reveal a pearl.

It was a wonderful day for both boys. Less so for the rest of the household, who woke in their own time but quickly learned to fear the sound of quiet giggles coming from the walls. It was the only noise they made. Otherwise, Damian and Wayne were ghosts with silent feet and nimble fingers.

Damian’s laptop waited upstairs, tabs full of arcane research still open on the screen. Down below, the equipment in the Cave trawled traffic cameras, social media updates, illicit eavesdropping hotspots, and more. In between was a family, waiting for their father, their son, their Bruce to return.

And yet…

It wasn’t that Damian didn’t miss Father. He did. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t worried. He was. He wanted his life to be in order again, for things to be the way they were supposed to be. But perhaps it wasn’t so bad to live in the moment, as Grayson often urged, and to take advantage of the unique opportunity to get to know Father this way.

Damian found himself smiling as he and Wayne skulked in the eaves, waiting for their latest trap to bear fruit. Hidden in the gloom, Wayne returned the smile—not with his mouth, still pressed into a somber line, but with his eyes. They were Father’s eyes, a deep, brilliant blue, all the more familiar with Wayne at last present and engaged. The horrible distance from the day before was gone, at least for the moment. Damian hoped it would stay away forever. He hoped, somehow, that Father would remember this day, when he returned.

There was a yelp below, then a thud as a body hit the floor before being yanked upward.

“Damian!”

Damian couldn’t hold in the low cackle that spilled from his throat. He had been sure that Drake would be the next to walk that path, and he was right. Next to him, Wayne peered down through the peephole at their prey, who was dangling by his ankle from the makeshift rope of bathrobe ties. Wayne gave Damian a thumbs up. Damian returned it with a wide grin.

“Damian, get down here!”

Damian didn’t think Grayson ended their games wholly because of the snare—they had wasted several hours on frivolities, and his help was needed down in the Cave—but he didn’t think the trap had helped any. Stupid Drake. Damian made sure he “accidentally” knocked into the other boy on their way to work. Soon, though, they were all too engrossed in the problem at hand for further spats.

It was dinner before they resurfaced and even that was only a brief respite. Pennyworth insisted on family dinner, one of his few unbreakable rules even in times of duress. They sat at the family table, each in their respective seats. Todd’s remained open, as always, while Wayne sat in Father’s seat at the head. He looked very small and lost in the tall chair, and Damian felt a pang deep in his chest. He missed Father.

(Was that possible? To enjoy his new friend and miss his father at the same time? He would have to ask Grayson later.)

There was little time to wrestle with this dilemma. The team was starting to see the glimmer of a hope in their work, the vague form of a lead on the cusp of solidifying. Only the hovering presence of Pennyworth kept them seated. Damian felt ready to levitate off his seat through sheer impatience. Even Grayson, who was normally fond of family dinners, ate more quickly than usual. The only sounds in the dining room were the quiet tinkling of fork tines on porcelain and the tapping of Wayne’s nails as he picked at his fingers.

The moment the last bite of food left his plate, Damian set down his fork and looked to the butler in the corner. Around him, the others were finishing as well, all except Wayne.

“Alfred, may we?” Grayson asked, already standing as he gestured toward the door. The old man sighed, but he gave a nod of assent, and the dining room echoed with the scrape of chairs being pushed back all at once.

Grayson was halfway to the door already, Cain and Drake close behind. Damian hurried after them, skidding to a stop only when Wayne waved to get his attention.

“What is it?” Damian demanded. At the blank, guarded look that unrolled across the other boy’s face, Damian sighed. “Apologies, Wayne. I can’t delay. We may have a lead in finding the wizard. Whatever it is, tell Pennyworth. We’ll return soon!”

He hadn’t meant it to be a lie. In his exuberance, Damian had envisioned returning to the Cave, finding the one piece of information that would crack the case wide open, and rushing out to find the villain in time to turn Wayne back into Father before bed. Instead, their promised lead had been a mythical will-o’-the-wisp, leading them ever onward only to flicker just out of reach.

Research turned into patrol. They hunted fiercely, cracking down on trouble with heavy fists. There would be no quarter given tonight, no time wasted. But despite their best efforts, the sun was burning the underside of the horizon when the team shuffled their tired bones back to the Cave and the Manor above. Wayne was already fast asleep in his bed, Titus curled on his legs. Damian spared them only a brief look from the doorway before shambling to his own bed and plunging into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Morning brought no respite. Despite a weariness to his marrow, Damian woke early, lured on by the elusive hunt. Breakfast was no more than a banana jammed between slices of toast, clutched in a hand that he waved at Wayne in passing. And despite his haste, the others were already downstairs when he arrived.

It wasn’t so much that they were making progress. _Progress_ would mean actionable intel, which they didn’t have. All they could do was follow rumors, track footprints—electronic, magical, or physical—and comb through old lore. That last one had been Drake’s idea, a backup plan and an extra layer of offense rolled into one. Damian grudgingly had to admit that the idea showed some merit. Regardless of what process was or was not being made, it felt good to be _doing_ again.

The first and thus far only pause of the day came in the afternoon, when an implacable Pennyworth came downstairs to roust his charges for a late lunch. As they ate, Damian could feel the hunt getting away from them, their quarry slipping deeper into the mists of Gotham’s underbelly. All thoughts of play and recreation with Wayne had evaporated from Damian’s mind. Duty always came before pleasure, and his duty was to seeing Father restored and evil removed from Gotham’s streets.

Unfortunately, Pennyworth insisted not only on a lunch break, but also on a one-hour complete cessation in work. They all protested, even Cain, but the butler held firm. They tried to watch a show, all piling into the den in hopes that an episode of the current family binge would make the hour speed by. But no one really watched. Since they rarely agreed on anything, a “family binge” really meant whatever Father was hooked on. It was so rare to see him relax that the rest of them swallowed whatever complaints they had about the programming to enjoy the peace. Even Damian and Drake parleyed during family binge.

But Father wasn’t here. There were no soft grunts of amusement to listen for, no eyerolls of disbelief to snicker over. Cain, normally the only one bold enough to cuddle up next to Father, had curled up in the far corner of the room with one of her graphic novels, gaze flicking up to study Wayne every few minutes. Grayson pretended to laugh at even the most inane jokes the characters made, and Drake stared at the screen with unblinking intensity, but his thumbs kept fiddling. For his part, Damian put all his might into staying on the couch. Every tendon and muscle in his body ached to spring to his feet and run back downstairs.

Maybe the hour could have been salvageable if Wayne had been interested, but the boy had retreated into his own head once more. Even a snickered reminder from Damian of Drake’s face in the trap had elicited no more than a flat stare.

Fine. That was _fine_. If Wayne wanted to sulk, he could. _Damian_ would focus on getting his father back. Still, he did feel guilty about neglecting the other boy. Whatever anxieties plagued Wayne seemed to be gathering once more, making his fingernails pick at each other until the tips bled.

When the hour was up, the team scrambled to their feet, Damian among them. He looked back only once to where Wayne remained on the couch. The boy sat slumped against the cushions, shoulders hunched and face marred by a scowl as his fingers continued to pick and fidget. Damian pushed aside the twist in his stomach and hurried to catch up with Grayson.

They were close. He could feel it. Only a few more hours of work and then, when they had something to show for their efforts, Damian would leave the Cave and return to Wayne’s side until patrol.

That’s what he told himself. But once again the hours smeared into a blur of glowing screens and flashing displays. For the second night in a row, Damian found himself suiting up without stepping foot upstairs, and then the night was busy enough that he had little thought to spare for those left at the Manor. He had to admit, at least to himself, that it felt good to run the rooftops once more with Grayson in the cowl. Father was an excellent partner, but this, this felt truly like home.

Damian stifled a yawn as he climbed the Cave steps once more. Behind and below, the others sat hunched at the computers, finishing their reports. Damian’s were often shorter, despite his thoroughness, since much of his reports’ contents were also covered by the others. He was looking forward to slipping through the grandfather clock and tumbling headfirst into bed. Not even Titus’s absence would bother him tonight.

Damian wasn’t aware anything was wrong at first. He didn’t even realize there were others still awake upstairs until he climbed to the second floor and caught Pennyworth’s voice coming out of the spare room.

“Master Bruce—“

A wad of cloth went sailing out the door and landed in a clump at Damian’s feet. After a moment of puzzled study, Damian realized it was his shirt. Specifically, it was his long-sleeved black shirt with the zebra stripes down the sleeves, which he had last seen folded neatly in his second dresser drawer.

Pennyworth was still speaking, but his voice—which, Damian was startled to note, was beginning to sound a trifle frayed—was interrupted by a second article of clothing being hurtled through the open door. This time Damian didn’t bother to examine the bundle, but instead stepped over it and into the doorway.

Though it was so late it was nearly early, Wayne stood awake in the center of the room, bare-chested and clad only in the same pair of gym shorts he had worn all day. Around him lay scattered the wrinkled contents of Damian’s entire dresser, as well as some of Drake’s. The bedsheets were rumpled as if they had been slept in, which didn’t fit with the rest of the room. Nor did how rumpled Pennyworth himself looked.

To be clear, Pennyworth would likely never look distressed enough to merit the dictionary definition of “rumpled.” Despite the late hour, his slacks were still impeccably pressed, his shirt tucked, his hair parted carefully to the side. It was more the staticky air about him that hummed with energy and the way the butler’s sleeves had been rolled and cuffed at the elbows.

As Damian watched, Wayne, face as dark as a thunderhead on the horizon, snatched the shirt in Pennyworth’s hand and chucked it toward the door. Damian scowled as it hit him square in the chest, then fell to the floor.

“Wayne. Why are you making a mess of my wardrobe?” Damian had been aiming for the mock anger Grayson used, not sure whether he should be truly angry yet and not wanting to upset Wayne until he could be certain. He didn’t think he had done it right, though, because Wayne looked even more upset than he had a moment ago.

Hands balling into fists, Wayne huffed angrily in Damian’s direction.

“Master Damian,” Pennyworth said, turning to face him. “I trust your evening excursions went well?”

“Well enough.” No one was injured and they had apprehended several criminals, though the wizard remained at large. “What is happening here?”

“Master Bruce is having a… a time of it, I’m afraid.” Pennyworth looked about as weary as the time his feline counterpart had knocked over all of Damian’s paints and then gone on a tear through the house.

Wayne glared at them both, blunted fingernails scratching furiously at his forearm.

“Is he itchy?” Damian asked. He didn’t really care why Wayne was pitching a fit. It was late and he wanted to go to bed, but the scratching was new.

“No, that is merely—“ Pennyworth gave a warning swat at the boy’s hand “—something he does when upset.”

Damian frowned down at the mess. “Because he doesn’t want to wear my pajamas?”

His gaze jumped up as Wayne snapped his fingers angrily.

“Master Wayne does not like to be spoken of as if he is not present,” Pennyworth explained. His cultured voice had taken on the flat drawl that was—Damian had learned—his version of an eye-roll. Damian wondered just how long this particular battle had gone on.

Pennyworth turned back to face the other boy. “Master Bruce, it is far past your bedtime. Choose a pyjama set and get into bed.”

Wayne’s face twisted into a defiant sneer.

“Young man–“ Pennyworth began, but Damian hurried forward and plucked a shirt from the floor.

“I like this one,” he said, holding out the blue whale t-shirt, but Wayne smacked it from his hand.

“Hey!”

“Master Bruce.” Pennyworth reached for Wayne, but the boy stepped back, shaking his head furiously.

Damian could feel his own temper sparking. He was _tired_ , and he didn’t like seeing his belongings mistreated. “Wayne, stop being such a baby,” he snapped.

“Master Bruce, that is _enough_.” Pennyworth was using the voice that could make even a grown Father freeze in his tracks, but Wayne seemed to be immune. His head still whipped back and forth as he retreated, knuckles bleeding white as he clenched his fists.

“Is everything okay?” came a voice from the doorway.

“Not _now_ , Drake,” Damian spat.

“Why does Bruce look so upset?”

Damian half-turned to tell Drake exactly what he could do with his unwanted questions, but Wayne began to leak sound—a labored wheeze building to a _uh-uh-uh_ , sending spider legs of fear skittering up Damian’s arms.

“Get Grayson,” he told Drake. “Get Grayson _now._ ”

It was happening. It was happening again. Wayne was going to have another fit and Grayson wasn’t here. Damian whipped back around, heart beating wildly as he tried to locate the nearest pillows. Behind him, he heard Drake disappear down the hall, for once having the common sense not to question an order.

Pennyworth was already kneeling in front of Wayne, hands hovering above quaking shoulders.

“Breathe with me, Master Bruce,” he was saying, voice low and calm. “Breathe like this. In. Out. Come on now.”

Damian leapt onto the bed and gathered the two pillows into his arms. His stomach twisted and fluttered like a squirrel caught inside his body, its tail smacking against the inside of his skin and up under his ribs. What if Pennyworth couldn’t get Wayne to calm down? What if he started screaming again? What if Grayson didn’t get here in time? What if Wayne tried to hurt himself again and Damian had to stop him? What if he _couldn’t_ stop him?

But there was the thunder of sprinting feet down the hall, and then Grayson stood in the doorway, hair still glistening from his shower downstairs. He gripped the doorframe as Drake peered from behind him.

“What is it?” Grayson’s eyes darted around the room. “What’s wrong?”

His gaze snagged on Wayne before Damian could answer, and he breathed a word that would cost him at the swear jar later.

Pennyworth was still trying to coax Wayne into calming down, a task that seemed less effective by the gasp. Grayson started forward, not yet reaching for the boy, but ready to spring into action. Drake still hesitated in the doorway, eyes wider than Damian had ever seen before.

And then there was Cain. She flickered into view behind Drake like a specter from the old supernatural movies, the kind that secretly gave Damian nightmares, though he never admitted it. Her hair was also wet and pulled back into a stubby ponytail, giving Damian a clear view of how her brow wrinkled as she peered into the room.

In the many months she had lived in Gotham, Damian had seen Cain in as many different circumstances. She was, though he hated to admit it, extraordinary and frightening in her many skills. He respected her in the same way he respected a king cobra or a crocodile—quietly, and from a great distance. But that was respect based on her abilities and general emotional opaqueness. Still clutching the pillows to his chest, Damian took an instinctive step back as Cain’s face changed. He had never seen her look like this before.

Cain was across the room before Damian could do more than blink, slipping around Drake and past Grayson before bodily moving Pennyworth out of her way. She knelt, hunching forward so she could look up into Wayne’s reddening face, then lifted her hand and brushed away a fat, glistening tear with her thumb. Wayne startled at the unexpected touch, watery blue eyes cracking open. His face wobbled.

Damian’s calves tensed as he prepared himself to hurtle forward with the pillows. The room stilled.

Cain threw her arms wide and gathered the boy into a tight hug, one hand bracing his back and the other cupping his head, as if they were hurtling through the air instead of standing still in a quiet room. Wayne sucked in a deep, sharp breath and held it, and so did Damian.

They stood in tableau—Damian, Pennyworth, Grayson, and Drake—as Cain scooped the boy up and pivoted on her knees to sit and curl protectively around Wayne. Though small herself, Cain’s limbs became a bramble, a thicket fierce and protective. She held him tightly, muscles flexing beneath the pajama sleeves, but otherwise remained utterly still. After a bewildered, sobbing hesitation, Wayne shifted in her grip and buried his face in her sweatshirt.

Over his sweaty thatch of black hair, Cain lifted her head. Damian knew she had sworn never to kill, had upended her entire life to keep that promise, in fact, but he wasn’t sure how much he trusted that oath in this moment. Her eyes were flinty with rage. He took another step back, spine stiffening, and raised the pillows defensively, but Cain’s gaze wasn’t fixed on him. She was looking at Pennyworth.

“You—“ she began, voice shaking with fury. “Hungry,” she said, arms tightening around the boy even further. With one hand, she cupped her fingers and carved a trench down from her throat. “ _Starving._ You starve him. You _starve him._ ”

Cain stared at the butler for a heartbeat longer, challenging, accusatory, and heartbroken. Then she ducked her head, nestling her cheek against Wayne’s head, leaving Damian to look to the others for answers.

He didn’t understand. What did Cain mean, starving? He had spent every meal with Wayne. The boy had eaten, not a lot, certainly, but some. He didn’t appear malnourished. And how could she accuse Pennyworth, of all people, of withholding food from anyone, let alone Father? The number of fights the two had gotten into over Pennyworth’s commands for Father to eat _more_ —

But Damian had a sinking feeling deep in his stomach that the others understood perfectly well. Drake’s eyes had narrowed contemplatively. Grayson and Pennyworth both looked like they had been slapped. Pennyworth rocked back on his heels and smoothed his mustache with one hand as Grayson swallowed hard.

Cain began to rock gently from side to side, humming tonelessly as she moved. She buried her face in the boy’s hair, and Wayne seemed to respond. From deep inside the huddle came the squelching sogginess of sniffles, but the crescendoing sobs of his tantrum, eased, then quieted, giving way to true tears.

Of those still standing, it was Drake who moved first. Stepping past the others, he stopped behind the crouched Pennyworth and rested a hand on the older man’s back. The touch seemed to break the butler free of whatever horror he had lost himself in. Hesitating, as if afraid of Cain’s reaction, Pennyworth leaned forward and reached for them both.

Old knees creaked and hip bones popped as Pennyworth sat on the cold hardwood floor and wrapped his arms around the huddled pair. Cain didn’t stab Pennyworth. Indeed, even as the butler’s embrace encircled her shoulders, she leaned heavily into the touch, taking Wayne sideways with her.

Damian felt a strange twist in his chest, though he wasn’t sure why. 

Maybe it was because, of all the unnatural and inexplicable things that had happened over the last few days, none had struck Damian as unlikely as seeing Alfred Pennyworth hug someone else. It wasn’t that Pennyworth was cold. He wasn’t. No more than Father, anyways. He was long-suffering with their faults, a patient ear for their heartaches, and could even be warm in his own way. Damian himself had benefited from Pennyworth’s late-night cups of heated milk and quiet conversation. But he didn’t… That is, he never… They weren’t a hugging family.

Damian knew cognitively that children should be hugged. Grayson hugged him sometimes, more than Damian wanted him to, even. And Father had been known to dispense an embrace or two in moments of true upset. Damian also knew that Pennyworth had been Father’s sole guardian in his youth. Yet somehow he had never pictured them like this—intertwined on a floor rug, Wayne’s runny nose smushed into Pennyworth’s shirt, Pennyworth’s cheek atop the boy’s head.

Maybe, Damian realized slowly, because this was something new, as new to them as it was to him.

Cain had shifted, loosening her grip so Wayne could fall from her arms into Pennyworth’s. Her hand rubbed soothing circles on the boy’s back, following the hiccuping stutter of his breaths. Then they disappeared from view, lost as Grayson knelt as well and wrapped his arms around Cain from the other side.

Pennyworth’s eyes were dry but suspiciously red-rimmed as he lifted his gaze to the two remaining boys. “You two as well,” he murmured.

Damian and Drake both hesitated, exchanged glances, then slowly crept forward.

It was awkward. Too many elbows and chins and knees. Damian didn’t have the knack for hug-giving, not having given but a few in his life. Wayne kept sniffling in his ear, and Damian’s back was hunched at an angle that would hurt eventually. He worried that he wouldn’t know the secret signal to let go and would hold on too long, or that the signal would never come and they would be stuck like this, all interwound in a huddled mass on the floor.

But…

But it was also nice. Damian closed his eyes and could smell the mixture of shampoo, detergent, and Pennyworth’s aftershave that meant home. He could feel Grayson’s chest rising and falling against his back, and the warmth of arms all around him. At one point, he opened his eyes, and Wayne was looking at him. Damian smiled. The other boy managed a small, wobbly smile in return and looped his fingers in Damian’s.

Maybe Cain knew what she was about after all.

Once Wayne had calmed entirely, the mass of limb and beating slowly loosened and disintegrated into six separate bodies again. Pennyworth took Wayne to the bathroom to wash his face, while the others set about tidying the clothes scattered about the room. It was Cain again who realized what the boy needed, disappearing down the hall then returning with Grayson’s most worn shirt, an oversized, tagless tee laundered into cottony softness.

Wayne put it on without fuss, pausing only to rub his cheek against the sleeve, then went to bed, red-cheeked and sniffly but calm. Titus followed without being told, trotting in from down the hall and settling his oversized bones onto the mattress next to his charge. Wayne had waited quietly as each member of the family stopped by the bed to kiss his forehead or ruffle his hair, even Damian, who chose to squeeze his hand. The others drifted off to their own bedrooms to sleep off the night’s toll. Grayson followed Damian to his room and insisted on tucking him into bed.

“You did good tonight,” he murmured as he pulled the covers up over Damian’s chest. “You listened, you followed instructions, and you stayed on task, even when frustrated.”

“I am not an infant, Grayson. I know proper procedure,” Damian pointed out, but he could feel a small bud of warmth behind his ribs.

Grayson chuckled. “I’m just saying.” He paused, looking down at Damian with an indecipherable look on his face, then rested his hand on Damian’s crown. “You know I’m proud of you, right?”

“Graysonnn,” Damian grumbled.

“Damiannn,” Grayson parroted in the same tone. He grinned, then softened into a smile as he rubbed his thumb against the space between Damian’s eyes. “I’m serious. You did good today. And every day.”

Damian clucked his tongue to hide his embarrassment. “As did you, Grayson.”

Grayson chuckled again. “Thanks, squirt.”

* * *

The next morning, changes were made. In an unprecedented change of procedure, Pennyworth and Grayson jointly put Father’s downstairs/upstairs division on a temporary hold. Data was transferred to encrypted laptops and brought upstairs, with strict orders that breaks were to be observed throughout the day.

It wasn’t such a bad change. The Cave was conducive to work, but was also cold, hard, and sterile. Wayne had never seen a laptop before, nor anything like the sophisticated readouts they were analyzing, so he spent time peering over one shoulder and then another as whoever he was watching explained what it was they were looking at.

At lunch, Pennyworth departed for further errands, with a promise to return in a few hours. He made sure to give Wayne’s head a solemn kiss and his shoulder a squeeze before he left. Soon after, Grayson unfolded himself from the recliner in the den and announced that he had to get ready for his shift in Bludhaven. After passing down stern instructions for all present to behave and call at the first sign of trouble, he left as well.

Damian, Drake, Wayne, and Cain looked at each other in the now adult-less den, momentarily at a loss.

 **Want to spar?** Cain signed. After the offer was translated, Wayne looked intrigued, so they took him belowstairs.

Wayne had no technical skill to speak of, being many years away from any formalized training, but Damian was pleased to note some latent talent. Wayne seemed to have a knack for tucking and rolling, and his look of single-minded focus when given directions made Damian’s lips twitch. Too often had he seen that look on Father’s face, and the familiarity gave the scene a strange doubling. It was like he could see Wayne for who he was, as a separate person apart from who he would become, but over that was traced the face of that someday man.

Time anomalies, Damian decided not for the first time, were the worst. Still, there were some upsides. He had never heard Father laugh the way Wayne was now.

Drake had already explained the scientific side of the magic. And Damian had seen for himself the memory loss that came with the magic’s slipping. But he still hoped against all evidence that something of this time would remain with Father when he returned.

They had taken a break for water and returned to the mat. Cain was demonstrating a flip on Drake while Wayne watched with keen interest. After helping the other boy up, she pointed to Wayne and then to Damian, indicating that they should replicate the result.

Damian grinned and strode to his spot on the mat. He had just lifted his arm to offer it to Wayne when he froze, eyes fixed to the collar of Wayne’s shirt. The boy had crouched forward, preparing for the opening move, and his t-shirt bagged and gaped away from his neck.

“Wayne,” Damian rasped, “where’s the charm?”

Wayne frowned, then skittered backward as Damian lunged for him.

“The charm!” Damian yelped. “It’s gone!”

The witch Zatanna had done what she could to remove any traces of tracking from the spell binding Father, but she had also instructed them to keep the charm on him at all times, just in case. And now it was gone.

Damian spun to stare at Drake and Cain, eyes wide. Their faces had gone ashen as they stared back. Then all three of them dove toward corners of the mat as Wayne watched in bemusement.

Had it fallen off in the sparring? It must have, but then why couldn’t they find it? Damian grunted as he lifted the edge of the mat and peered underneath. Nothing. Drake confirmed that it wasn’t under the table where their water cups sat, and Cain shook her head from over by the work bench.

“Wayne,” Damian called, “the charm around your neck. We must find it! Help us!”

“We need to go,” Drake was saying. “We can’t be here. If they can track him, they can’t find him here.”

“The Cave is impenetrable, Drake,” Damian snarled. “There is no safer place in all of Gotham.”

Wayne was digging into the deep pockets of his shorts. With a quizzical twist to his mouth, he held up a long leather cord, at the end of which hung a small obsidian trinket that shone dully in the fluorescent light.

“You found it!” Damian’s relief quickly darkened into anger. “You took it off?! You never take it off! NEVER take it off, Wayne, do you hear me?”

He was yelling by the time he reached Wayne, but Cain was already there, plucking the necklace from Wayne’s fingers and looping it over his head. Wayne had stepped back, hands partially raised into the defensive position they had taught him not an hour before.

Cain rested a warning hand on Damian’s shoulder, but he shook her off.

“That keeps you safe.” Damian jabbed a finger at the small symbol. “Do you understand? If you take it off, they can find you. They can take you and hurt you.”

“Guys, we need to go,” Drake repeated.

“Dr _ake_ —“

“No, listen to me. We don’t know how this magic works. Maybe the charm is just a safeguard. Or maybe they felt his location light up, but now he’s hidden again. But if it was lit up long enough to be triangulated, they’re on their way. And they have magic. _And we are too close to the Manor._ ”

Drake spoke quickly, words falling like hail as he hurried around the Cave, shoving equipment into a duffel bag he had pulled from a locker. “We have to _go_. Draw them to another location, then hide in a third so they don’t come here and don’t find him somewhere else. But we can’t wait for Dick or Alfred. We have to go _now_.”

It made sense. Damian was loathe to admit any sense from Drake, but his words were tactically sound. Still, he looked to Cain. At her nod, they scattered again in all directions.

That was how they found themselves crammed into one of Father’s unregistered sports cars, still dressed in street clothes, dominos on their faces, and two duffel bags in supplies tossed into the backseat. Damian and Wayne sat with the bags, while Cain and Drake had called the front.

Damian had wanted to drive. He was an excellent driver with getaway training. He had been overruled. Instead, he gripped the handle above the window and braced as Drake skidded around another tight turn.

“The goal is to evade detection, not risk the wrath of every police officer in Gotham,” Damian snapped.

“No backseat drivers,” was the retort. Next to Damian, Wayne was looking distinctly queasy.

“Do you even _have_ a driver’s license?” Damian demanded.

“Of the three of us, who’s clocked the most hours behind the wheel?” 

“Mario Kart is not an appropriate substitute for practical knowledge, Drake!” Damian gritted his teeth as they narrowly beat a yellow light. 

“If you’re so worried, shut up so I can concentrate.” Drake jerked the wheel, cutting off a slow-moving minivan with a squeal of the tires.

They were headed to a specific traffic circle several miles from the Cave’s entrance. The intersection was a particularly busy one, with offshoots in multiple directions. Once there, Damian would take off Wayne’s charm for the count of five, hopefully long enough to attract the attention of anyone monitoring his position, then replace it before Drake chose an exit. Then they would go to a safe house at the other end of town and hide out until Grayson could return from Bludhaven.

Even as Damian attempted to keep his bearings in the speeding vehicle, he tried to type out a message to Pennyworth. Cain was doing the same in the front seat, but to Grayson. He had just finished, head spinning blearily, when they approached their target.

“Now, Damian,” Drake barked as he merged into traffic. Damian had to admit that his style, while aggressive and erratic, was efficient. Despite heavy Gotham traffic, they were soon in the centermost ring, where traffic rotated the fastest.

Reaching across the seat, Damian snatched the charm from over Wayne’s head and counted aloud.

“One.”

A horn blared to their right.

“Two.”

Cain braced her hand against the dash as Drake wove into an outer lane and then back in again.

“Three.”

Next to him, Wayne let out a muted noise of alarm.

“Four.”

Damian looked over, pulse stuttering as he took in Wayne’s pallor. The other boy looked back with pupils constricted into pinpricks, one hand clutched to his chest.

“Damian?” Drake demanded when the _five_ failed to sound. Cain twisted around in her seat to peer around the headrest. Her dark eyes widened.

“Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong with Wayne!” Damian yanked the cord back down over Wayne’s head. “Get out! Go go go!”

Logically, each of the things that happened next likely happened in sequence, but to Damian, they all happened at once, a horrific blur of light and sound and motion.

Cain unbuckled her seat and reached for Wayne.

Wayne grabbed Damian’s hand and squeezed so tightly that Damian’s knuckles ached. 

The car wrenched sideways. 

Wayne screamed, high and rough in a way that seemed to scrape at the underside of his throat. 

Damian recognized the scream.

Damian, Drake, and Cain all said different words that would have made Pennyworth’s mustache bristle.

The sky above them exploded into an unearthly green.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title for this entire fic: Bruce Wayne Is Chronically Touch-Starved And Has Been Since Age Eight: A Statement By LurkingLurkerWhoLurks
> 
> Eyyyy, look at that! Under a month this time! AND it's a long chapter, like a full five single-spaced pages longer than my usual. Which is good because I can already tell the next one is going to be a beast. Whups.
> 
> Shout-out to Audreycritter for being my emotional support on this one and assuring me that it didn't suck!


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I can fix this I can fix this I can fix this. The words were stuck between a chant and a prayer, stamping against his chest like a heartbeat, repeating while the car filled with screams._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that there's going to be some actual, legit swearing in this chapter, courtesy of... well. It's happening, okay? This is your heads up, since that's a bit of a departure. (Two! Two whole swears.)

Tim hated the color green. He didn’t always. When he was a kid, green was just a color, like pink or orange or blue. He liked the happy red of his favorite sweatshirt, the warm grey of his bedspread, the deep purple of his geode, but he didn’t think about green much. It was, at most, the color of grass, the color of vegetables, the color of his mother’s emerald earrings.

Green became more, over time. Green was the color of the treeline separating his house from the Waynes’. Green was the money that his parents chased away and away and away. Green was Ivy’s vines, creeping like tentacles over his escape and up his legs. Green was the Joker’s hair. Green was the Riddler’s suit. Green was Jason’s eyes when he looked at Tim.

Green was the sky when Bruce disappeared.

The first time, it had happened too quickly to process. There had been gunfire and screaming. Bruce screaming, away and out of sight. The battle had surged forward like surf, bodies all magnetized toward the edge, toward the screaming, only to pull back as common sense set in. They ran. They left Bruce.

Tim _never_ left Bruce.

Bruce had come home, changed but mostly unharmed. With Jason.

Tim didn’t know how he felt about any of it. Which was nothing new, honestly. Most of the time, he felt too much, or too little, or he didn’t like how he felt so he turned each valve and crimped each tube and bottled it all up. A bespelled Bruce was a puzzle, a sort of living experiment with definable terms that Tim needed to calculate. Calculate the terms and the solution would present itself.

Admittedly, Tim was distracted by some of the variables; namely, the novelty of a six-year-old Bruce Wayne who contained within him more good humor and emotional openness than the rest of the house put together, and the presence of Jason Todd, who probably still wanted Tim dead.

That had been days ago, though. Jason had left. Bruce had changed again. Days of research and sleepless nights and Tim kept slamming into dead ends like a bird into glass. He had to fix this. It was his _job_.

That was what kept circling through Tim’s head now, as the car sped toward their chosen roundabout and he kept a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. He was the oldest, technically. With Dick and Alfred away, it was his job to keep everyone safe, even if that meant shoving them all into a car he didn’t fully know how to drive. Even if it meant leaving the safety and security of the Cave. The idea of running away had scared Tim spitless, but the logic was there, leading him to the duffel bags, to the car, and out into Gotham like the straight, unwavering arrows of construction lights.

_Detour ahead. Veer right._

For a while, it had seemed like everything was going okay. Tim’s heart was about to burst out of his chest, and he was pretty sure he was giving himself premature arthritis with his grip on the wheel, but all was going according to plan. They were in the traffic circle. No one was dead. The amulet was coming off and then would go right back on again. They would flee, hide, and wait for Dick and Alfred to come.

And then the world exploded into green for the second time.

Tim went blind, his vision glassing over like he’d been dunked into glowing toxic waste. His elbows locked, trying to keep the car at the same rotation they’d been in around the circle.

 _I can fix this I can fix this I can fix this._ The words were stuck between a chant and a prayer, stamping against his chest like a heartbeat, repeating while the car filled with screams.

Cass’s foot struck him in the side of the head as she shimmied into the back seat, and Tim cursed, wrenching the car sideways.

There was so much screaming. Cass shouting orders. Damian crying out words Tim didn’t know. Tim, yelling in fear and anger as they were sideswiped by another car. Bruce screaming and screaming and screaming. Ducking his head, Tim swiped his watering eyes on his sleeves, then squinted forward. 

The road was a disaster as cars careened wildly in every direction, their drivers blinded or panicking or both. Another swear caught in the back of Tim’s throat like a wet hunk of gum as he yanked the wheel to the right and narrowly avoided being cut off by a minivan. He couldn’t see the magician, but the sky was still glowing verdant and bright.

“He’s changing!” Damian’s voice was high and tight like a garrote.

Tim wanted nothing more than to twist around in his seat to look, and the thought sent a queasy shiver of fear up his spine.

“Don’t look!” Tim gasped, his words lost beneath the squeal of tires and the cacophony of blaring horns. “Don’t look at him. Damian, don’t look!”

He kept shouting it as his shoulders tingled and his back hunched and he jerked the wheel back and forth like a bumper car driver. There were things people shouldn’t see. Shouldn’t observe.

_Please, I don’t want my face to melt off. Don’t make Damian’s head explode._

The back seat was shaking and there was a fluttering in the corner of Tim’s vision–a blanket pulled from the floor and tossed over Bruce. Then Cass was diving back through the gap in the seats, a bag clenched in her hand. 

Tim was pretty sure his brain was half a second away from short-circuiting, his focus rattling on the edge of shattering in all directions. _The car—DANGER—magic—BRUCE—screaming—honking—crashing—SWERVE—sirens—gotta go—phone—_

The car hopped a curb and then back off again as Tim bobbled the phone Cass had shoved into his chest.

“Call!” she barked as she lowered the window.

“Wh—“

It was ringing in his ear. Or was that the damage from the screams? Damian was gasping in the back seat. Crying? Had he looked?

“What?” The voice was tinny and far away, but sharp enough to cut through the chaos.

There was no time to question how.

“ _Help_ ,” Tim gasped. “They found us.”

He screamed in terror and jerked the wheel as a bright beam of light—white, not green, but no less dangerous—jackhammered into the road just in front of the car

He didn’t have time to think, to question when Jason barked out, “Where are you?”

“Pine and—Fulton, heading nor— _Cass, what are you doing_?!” Tim’s attention was yanked away as Cass began shimmying out of her open window.

Jason was yelling something, but Bruce was still screaming and Tim didn’t know if Damian had looked and cars were still swerving everywhere and he couldn’t see the wizard and _Cass was climbing out the window and half-clinging to the roof._

“CASS GET BACK IN THE—JASON PLEASE—DAMIAN, DAMIAN ARE YOU O—“ Tim let out another high-pitch screech as he whipped the car around a construction barrier, narrowly avoiding another collision.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Cass brace herself against the sides of the open window and lift her arm. A batarang went whistling out toward a target he couldn’t waste time finding. Safe house, safe house, they need to get to a safe house, but they couldn’t until they lost any potential tail.

He needed to get back in the crowd, to lose himself in the stampeding herd of panicking cars, but the thought of plunging back into the mosh made Tim want to puke. He gritted his teeth and tried to hold the car steady, tried not to jostle Cass, tried to ignore the fading screams in the back seat, tried not to crash.

Tim ducked instinctively as an engine roared next to the car, a coupe trying to get ahead, its occupants white-faced and bug-eyed.

“—eft at Archer. Do you hear me?” Jason was demanding in his ear. “Left on Archer, then right on 4th. Shake your tail and keep heading north until you hit the burned out Quik-E. I’ll meet you. _Stay low._ ”

He sure as heck wasn’t going to stay high or do whatever it was Cassandra was doing up there. Tim managed to hit the speaker button, then dropped the phone into a cup holder and focused on getting them as lost as he could in the chaos of cars.

Cass slid back into the car, windblown but unhurt, allowing them even more anonymity. She rolled up her window before slithering into the back seat with Damian and a silent Bruce.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” Tim snapped. Without looking, he could feel her dismissive gesture. “I’m not kidding, Cass. You could have died.”

A hand reached forward and patted his shoulder, and the touch was enough to take a little bit of the sting off his still-cresting hysteria.

Tim followed Jason’s directions, and soon the madness was over almost as quickly as it had begun. They wove back into the thick of downtown Gotham traffic, then were spat out onto a side street that forked into ever-narrowing tributaries. There were no more dramatic bolts of light or shots fired. Traffic slowed, then dwindled down to normal people running normal errands instead of fleeing for their lives.

“Are you okay back there? Damian?”

The running commentary was still going in the static behind his eyes, a panicked babble of _oh my god we could have died we almost died the CAR Bruce is gonna kill me was anyone hurt did anyone crash were we followed where are we going is Bruce okay is Damian okay Jason’s on the phone where is Dick where is Alfred I want Bruce we almost **died**_ , but over top of it, he heard a soft _tt_ from the back seat.

“You didn’t look?” It felt important to know, to confirm. Maybe nothing would have happened, but maybe something would have, they didn’t know. And maybe Bruce’s magic wasn’t the Ark or anything close, but Tim couldn’t shake off that horrible grip of certainty on the back of his neck.

“No, I didn’t look,” snapped Damian, and even with the attitude, Tim sighed with relief at hearing his voice.

“Bruce? Is Bruce okay?”

“Cain is keeping him under the blanket,” Damian replied. Bruce had stopped screaming, leaving behind the same, unnatural silence as the last time he had changed. Did that mean he hadn’t changed at all? Or that he had only jumped ahead within his period of chosen muteness? Tim couldn’t remember how long Alfred had said Bruce would remind silent and couldn’t spare the brainpower to fish it out.

They passed the gas station Jason had mentioned, a shuttered husk of concrete and ash. A bike revved and pulled alongside the car, making Tim flinch. Its driver, a leather-jacketed thug in a visored red helmet, gestured forward, then pulled ahead of the car. Tim couldn’t remember the last time having Jason Todd around had made him feel safer. It was a day for miracles, he supposed, and held his tongue as they continued forward.

Jason led them down yet another narrow side street, into a part of town Tim had only ever seen by streetlight and moonlight.

“Where are we going?”

Tim shook his head as Damian echoed his own thoughts. “I don’t know. Jason said to follow him.”

Damian scoffed. “Because he’s so trustworthy.”

“Cass said to call him.”

There was a meaningful silence in the back. Tim didn’t dare take his eyes off the road. He was going to need his hands pried off the wheel when this was over.

“What’s she saying?”

“That he owes her.” Damian’s translation was slow, doubtful. “That he wants to help.”

That seemed unlikely. But Cass had his number. And Jason had come when they called.

They ditched the car alongside Jason’s bike in a trash-filled back alley. With its dented door, missing fender, and other various scrapes, the car looked like it belonged now. Bruce had dozens of cars, but Tim still had the skin-tingling certainty that he was going to be in big trouble for wrecking this one. But that was a worry for another day. And for another Bruce.

Cass was the only one who had dared look under the blanket, just a quick peek to make sure the Bruce they had was still breathing. He was, but whatever she had seen had left a strange expression on her face. Tim reached in and pulled Damian out, which made the kid growl and smack at his hand, but Tim noticed he still stayed close, content to leave Tim between him and Jason.

Jason hadn’t asked if they were alright, merely looked them over in silence, unreadable beneath the mask. He had been the one to reach into the car and haul the body up into his arms.

The body was bigger, Tim noticed. Bruce was older. Tim couldn’t tell how much, and there wasn’t time to find out. They followed Jason into a narrow passageway, tensed for danger to come leaping from the corners. Cass stuck to Jason’s shadow, Tim and Damian directly behind her. If this was a trap, if Jason planned to lead them into a trap and drop their corpses in some back alley, Cass would read it on him.

“You stick close to me,” Tim had whispered to Damian. “You keep me or Cass in sight at all times, and if things go south, run. Find a way to get to Dick or Alfred or Babs.”

Damian, for once, hadn’t argued.

If they were following protocol, there would still be blocks and blocks to go before the safe house. A vehicle lent speed, but what good was leaving a traceable mode of transportation outside your hiding spot? Tim counted the blocks, the meters, the feet, and tried not to flinch every time a trash can rustled or a dog barked in the distance.

Jason led them into an apartment building, its corners filled with trash and its walls stained by the years. The building itself was quiet, save for the far-off crashing of glass and the sporadic bursts of shouts or laughter. They climbed a flight of stairs, the pace too quick for Tim’s adrenaline-weak legs. He had to pause at the top as the others continued on ahead. He caught up again when they reached an apartment door and Cass knelt to pick the lock.

They hadn’t been able to follow through on their original plan, angling for one of Tim’s safehouses. He had multiple across the city—they all did. Contingency plans were their way of life. Sometimes Dick joked that Bruce should change his name to Backup and be done with it. This one, Tim assumed, was one of Jason’s. He was less sure after Cass forced the lock.

They slipped into the apartment, the interior dark, the windows shuttered. Tim was last and made sure to shut the door and throw the lock. It wasn’t enough. A door in a place like this was just plywood and particle board; next to magic, it was even less.

Tim let his eyes adjust to the gloom, then flinched instinctively as Damian flipped on the light.

A thin crescent of tile buffered the front door from the carpet of the living room, and the others had already spilled out into the small space. It was a sparse place, spartan in the way all but the most frequently used safe houses tended to be. There was a couch, a coffee table, and a chair, the first two covered in sheets and the latter tucked into a corner. To Tim’s left, he could see a small alcove that appeared to be some excuse for a kitchen, while a closed door to his right likely led to the bathroom, making the further door on the far side of the room the bedroom door. It was a standard layout. Looked like Jason hadn’t forgotten all of his training.

(Who was he kidding? Jason had forgotten none of his training. It was part of what made him so dangerous.)

Jason was already striding forward toward the couch, not bothering to pull away the dust cloth before laying the body out on the cushions—gently, Tim noticed, despite the tension in his shoulders and legs. They all gravitated toward it, like magnets, like fish on a line. Beneath the blanket, the body groaned. As one, they froze. Jason’s gloved hand hesitated in the air. Tim held his breath, then let it out again. He was being silly. No matter who was beneath that blanket, no matter the age or the behavior, it was Bruce. He could handle Bruce.

Jason’s fingers closed around the loose fabric and almost angrily ripped the blanket away.

Bleary blue eyes blinked up at them, pupils swimming groggily. The face they were set in was a familiar one, more so than it had been previously. The last of Bruce’s baby fat still clung to the apples of his cheeks, but otherwise he was lean, hewn clean by the passing of time. The lines and angles Tim knew were there, if he looked hard enough, but were mottled by bruises. The bruises were battling the hair for attention.

“What the—“ Jason hissed.

“Wazz w’th’mask, bro?” Bruce slurred. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in a lean, pale neck. 

Damian turned slightly to mouth _Bro?_ at Tim, nose scrunched and mouth twisted with disgust.

Tim agreed but ignored him to instead say, “The changing process should have erased any injuries. And he wasn’t like that in the car, before the change. Right?”

Cass shook her head, then reached out a hand to touch a dangling curl.

Bruce flinched back, then grimaced.

“Why,” Damian asked slowly, his high voice sawing through the air like a serrated blade, “is he blond?”

No one answered. Tim didn’t think anyone knew the answer, except Bruce, who was currently stretching and rubbing one eye.

“Wher’m I?” Bruce asked, consonants still sliding against each other, swallowing the vowels between.

It had to be the fading adrenaline dragging Tim’s focus, or maybe the tantalizing possibility of _some_ answers, because he kept eyeing Bruce’s clothes. The blanket had fallen to Bruce’s lap, revealing the same t-shirt younger Bruce (Bruce-10, Tim had labeled him, to distinguish from Bruce-Prime and Bruce-6) had been wearing in the Cave, only now it was comically small, the collar digging a pink line into his throat.

“How old are you?” Tim asked.

“Don’t know you.” Why it took that long for Bruce to realize, Tim wasn’t sure. Had he hit his head? Blue eyes continued to roam. “Where. Where am I?”

“How do you feel?” Tim tried again.

The blue eyes narrowed after a moment’s thought. “D’you drug me? ‘M I drugged? Fuck, my head.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Tim, Cass, Damian, and Jason all snapped together, then eyed each other warily.

Bruce paid them no mind. Instead, he was grinding the heel of his hand into one eye—the one that wasn’t raccooned with bruises—as he looked around the room.

“Who are you?” Whatever was wrong with him, Bruce seemed to becoming more lucid by the second, which seemed like a good idea, but with lucidity came awareness. He tried to stand, but Jason reached out and pushed him down.

“Hey!”

Tim was pretty sure he was on the verge of hysteria. His heart still hadn’t slowed down, and now he was a second away from laughing until he cried, because Bruce was a teenager, bleach blond, looked like he’d gotten into a bar fight, and pouted worse than Damian when surprised.

“Si’down,” Jason growled.

Bruce was not cowed, which seemed pretty stupid since he hadn’t hit his full growth spurt yet and was several inches shorter and many pounds lighter than Jason currently. Pout still on full display, he knocked Jason’s hand away.

“Lemme up.” Bruce’s butt had barely lifted off the couch before Jason was pushing him back down again.

“Listen, idiot—“

“Get your hands o—“

They were both shouting now, and Damian had started forward as well, squawking at “Todd” not to manhandle “Wayne.” The noise was making Tim’s head hurt, and he was considering whether to back out of the apartment and leave them all when a door slammed down the hall.

They all froze—four masks and one startled mini-dad.

“Perimeter check,” Tim hissed.

They scattered to the corners of the small space, leaving Bruce where he sat, and ran the protocol they should have done when first stepping foot in the door. The doors, windows, and every conceivable niche and crawlspace was checked thoroughly and quickly before they reconvened in the center of the room.

 **We should patrol the neighborhood,** Cass signed.

“We need to call Richard,” Damian insisted.

“Walkabout,” Jason agreed with Cass. “Before you call anyone. If it’s clear, you can steal another car and get out of here on your own.”

“We didn’t steal the _first_ one,” Tim protested. He wasn’t sure why.

“What is going _on_?” Bruce demanded. Whatever had been keeping him calm before was gone now. “Where am I, why are you all in masks, and why am I here?”

Four heads swiveled his direction, though Tim found himself studying the others as closely as Bruce. Cass still had a hint of the strange twist to her mouth, so slight that someone like Bruce or Jason likely wouldn’t notice, and Tim couldn’t tell if it was because of Bruce’s age, his hair, his face, or something else. Damian looked angry. Nothing new there. And Jason… As Tim watched, Jason opened his mouth to speak, then reconsidered and closed it again. He also had a weird expression, a swirling mix of Cass and Damian, something between angry and… almost bittersweet.

Cass was the first to respond, not to Bruce but to the others. **We’ll patrol outside, see if it’s safe. Tim and Damian will stay here with Bruce.**

“What’s she doing?” Bruce demanded. “Is that sign language? Hey, can you not hear me?”

Jason was already scoffing behind his helmet. “Think again, Princess. I came when you called, alright? I did my duty, and now I’m out—Don’t shake your head at me, _yes_ I am—“

“We go,” Cass announced calmly. “You—“ she pointed to Tim, Damian, and Bruce in turn, “—stay.”

Damian was opening his mouth again. She cut him off. “No call. Wait.”

“Cass,” Tim tried, but she rested a hand on his shoulder and tilted her chin down at him. He wasn’t sure how she managed to put the same weight into her grip as Batman, but she did.

“Protect,” Cass commanded to Tim. “Stay,” she told Damian. “Come,” she ordered Jason.

Tim watched in open-mouthed bemusement as she floated to the door, Red Hood in tow, only to pause and turn back to spear Bruce with a look. “Behave,” she warned. Then they were gone.

Bruce’s stunned “What the fuck just happened?” broke the silence.

Tim sighed. “She does that. You’ll get used to it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eyyy, thanks again for your patience. Ever slowly we creep along! Together!

**Author's Note:**

> I can already tell this fic is going to end up as A Thing because it won't leave me alone. I legitimately have some nature vs. nurture concerns I want to get into regarding Bruce's personality; hence, the de-aged fic, despite it not being my top trope. So we're gonna explore some core concepts together, and it's going to take some time, so buckle up.
> 
> Also, I've developed an alarming addiction to feedback via comments. Please feed the beast.


End file.
